Keeping an Eye on the NLRB

There has been a lot of talk about the decline of unions in this country over the last 50 years.  There has been less talk about the pitiful state of labor law in this country and the strikingly anti-union stance of the National Labor Relations Board whose job it is to ensure that worker's rights are protected (although you wouldn't know that by the actions of the current board).  However, that is changing.  American Rights at Work has just launched Eye on the NLRB to post updates on commentary of the board.

Now, I know that you might be thinking why does this matter to higher education?  After all, most of higher education is in the public sector and therefore regulated by state law rather than federal law.  Well, the answer to that is quite simply solidarity. 

The number of contingent faculty in the private sector is on the rise, just as it is in the public sector, and, in many instances, the working conditions for contingent faculty in the private sector are no better than in the public sector.  Also, remember that full-time faculty in the private sector don't even have the protections of the National Labor Relations Act thanks to the Yeshiva decision, which means that any contingent faculty who are looking to organize a union will necessarily be doing so on their own without their full-time brothers and sisters.      

But the real issue here is that private sector organizing is hard and employees (particularly those like contingent faculty who are already in a precarious position) face real threats when they try to organize.  That is because the private sector simply has more leeway in terms of creating a hostile environment for those trying to form a union. 

Just think about how hard the private institutions fought graduate employee unionization until they got the Bush appointed NLRB to rule that graduate employees were not employees and therefore not protected by the National Labor Relations Act--and how quickly on the heals of that decision New York University refused to continuing recognizing the NYU grad employees who had already won an election and were working under a contract.  Think about how long the adjunct union at Pace University has been fighting to get a first contract while the university uses every legal tool at their disposal to drag out negotiations and try to break the union.

We need better labor law in this country and we need a labor board that ensures that worker's rights are protected, not a labor board that does little more than shill for corporations.  So check out Eye on the NLRB and keep tuned into what the Board is doing or not doing to help workers.