Elections Matter: Republican Leaders Introduce Bill to Cripple the NLRB

Republican Leaders Introduce Bill to Cripple the NLRB

Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) threw down the gauntlet to U.S. workers this week by introducing a bill to fundamentally alter the mission of the National Labor Relations Board.

McConnell, who is the Senate minority leader, and Alexander, the ranking Republican on the Senate committee that oversees worker and workplace issues, would prefer a non-functioning, paralyzed NLRB rather than the current one that gives workers some path to workplace justice. Their bill, called the "National Labor Relations Board Reform Act," would add a sixth board member and require the board to consist of three Republicans and three Democrats. That would ensure that unfair labor practice and illegal management tactics, like firing workers who show support for union representation, would never be resolved.

Alexander has been warning for months of his plans to attack workers' rights and the NLRB if Republicans win control of the Senate in the November elections.

CWA President Larry Cohen said Alexander's plan to "change the NLRB from an advocate to an umpire" is absurd. "No regulatory agency in this country operates like that," Cohen said.

"Apparently these Senators never read the preamble to the National Labor Relations Act," he continued. "The preamble clearly states that the purpose of the Act is to promote collective bargaining. The bipartisan drafters of the law, and confirmed by every generation of Republicans except the current leaders, absolutely understood that government needed to be pro-collective bargaining or management interests would trample workers. In the first ten years of the NLRB, 10 million workers achieved collective bargaining rights. Alexander and McConnell are guilty of a total fabrication of what the law says and the outcomes during its early decades."

Listen to more of Larry's remarks on The Ed Show here.

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Without the NLRB, there would be no framework to enforce workers' rights and resolve disputes and no path to justice for workers who have been harmed by employers' illegal actions. Employers could break the law with impunity, knowing that workers have no recourse. The dysfunctional Senate rules and obstructionist Republican Senators kept the NLRB from having a full slate of members for a decade.

Then, late last summer, through the extraordinary efforts of the Democracy Initiative, co-founded by CWA, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and NAACP, the Fix the Senate Now coalition and Democracy partners helped changed the rules, leading to Senate confirmation of a full-five member board.