The Latest from the Prospect
 ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

View this email in your browser

 

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

Meyerson on TAP

Can the Government Level the Playing Field for Workers?

The union campaigning to organize an Alabama Amazon warehouse is hoping
it will.

As anyone who follows the ebbs and flows of workers' attempts to gain
some power over their jobs already knows, there's an easy way to
predict whether those workers will win or lose. Workers who can't be
intimidated because they'd be very hard to replace-those at media
outlets, museums, think tanks, and such-have been joining unions in
record numbers over the past several years. Workers who can be fired
without recourse-like those at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer,
Alabama-can be intimidated into rejecting a union, as Amazon proved
last year by waging an inherently coercive and intrusive anti-union
campaign.

Now, however, the union that didn't prevail in last year's
vote-the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU)-is
trying again, with workers currently voting

in the RWDSU's second such campaign. This time around, however, the
union is trying to change the rules under which such campaigns are
governed-or rather, restoring those rules so they conform to the
meaning of the National Labor Relations Act, which was intended to
secure workers' rights to form unions. In so doing, they are relying
on the Biden appointees on the National Labor Relations Board and its
Biden-appointed general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, to interpret the law
as its drafters intended.

Abruzzo in particular has made clear that she views the steady erosion
of the law's guarantees-erosions which have permitted employers to
intimidate their workers when they're considering joining a union-to
be violations of the NLRA that require remedies from the Board. As I
noted

last summer, in one Abruzzo memo
,
she told the Board's regional counsels to consider applying a
long-ignored rule (named after the employer in question, Joy Silk) that
would require a company that had employed unfair labor practices in its
anti-union campaign to recognize and bargain with the union once a
majority of company employees had signed union affiliation cards.

In a subsequent memo
,
Abruzzo suggested some remedies that the Board's regional offices
could impose on employers when they engaged in what has become such
routine union-busting activity as requiring employees to attend its
anti-union propaganda "captive audience" meetings and plastering the
workplace with anti-union propaganda. Amazon used every trick in the
book to defeat the union last year, including captive-audience meetings
and affixing anti-union broadsheets to bathroom stalls. Here, from her
memo, are the remedies to these practices that Abruzzo laid out:

Union access (e.g., requiring an employer to provide a union with
employee contact information, equal time to address employees if they
are convened by their employer for a "captive audience" meeting about
union representation, and reasonable access to an employer's bulletin
boards and all places where notices to employees are customarily
posted).

Today, the RWDSU filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB,
alleging that the captive-audience meetings that Amazon is currently
compelling its workers to attend, its removal of union literature from
break rooms, and other such common practices for employers in recent
decades are violations of the NLRA. In its press release, the union
cited and quoted at length Abruzzo's memo-saying, in effect, that
there's a new sheriff in town not willing to go along with decades of
Board and court decisions that have enabled employers to trample
workers' rights in defiance of the NLRA.

In short, the union is wagering that for the first time in many years,
the state will intervene decisively on the workers' side. If it
does-and there's little doubt that Biden's appointees are heading
in that direction-maybe, just maybe, workers will be able to win some
power not just in rarified sectors but across the length and breadth of
American worksites.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

[link removed]

The Wilson Phillips Blockade and Republican Obstruction

A 2-2 tie on the Federal Trade Commission empowers Republicans to block
action into bad actors in the economy-and Senate Republicans are
enabling this. BY DAVID DAYEN

Crypto: Containing the Hydra-Headed Beast

While the Fed and the Treasury dither, this behemoth is getting too
complex to contain. BY ROBERT KUTTNER

The Uphill Fight for an Ethics Scrutinizer

In Maryland, clean-government groups want to create the post of public
advocate to advance voters' causes and call out government sleaze. BY
RACHEL M. COHEN

To receive this newsletter directly in your inbox, click here to
subscribe. 

[link removed]

 

Click to Share this Newsletter

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

YOUR TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION SUPPORTS INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

The American Prospect, Inc.
1225 I Street NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC xxxxxx
United States
Copyright (c) 2022 The American Prospect. All rights reserved.

To opt out of American Prospect membership messaging, click here
.

To manage your newsletter preferences, click here
.

To unsubscribe from all American Prospect emails, including newsletters,
click here
.