GOP Votes To Strip Labor Board Of Much Of Its Power

[Admin]

GOP Votes To Strip Labor Board Of Much Of Its Power

WASHINGTON -- In their latest effort to aid the Boeing Company, House Republicans took the extraordinary step on Thursday of voting to strip the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) of much of its power.

The bill, entitled the Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act, would bar the federal labor board from ordering a company to close or relocate a workplace, even if that company has violated labor law. Thursday's House vote fell along party lines, with 238 Republicans for the bill and 186 Democrats against it.

The bill is designed expressly to thwart a controversial complaint brought by the NLRB against Boeing that has put the future of a South Carolina Boeing plant into limbo.

Although Republicans claim the law would save South Carolina jobs, Democrats and union leaders say it would gut the 77-year-old independent agency of its authority, while also letting Boeing off the hook for alleged misdeeds.

"Under this bill, if a company wants to bust a union by outsourcing its work to China, this bill permits it," Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) said on the House floor. "Working people across this country should pay careful attention to this bill. It takes away every working American’s rights."

Meanwhile, Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), one of the most vocal critics of the NLRB, said the board was exercising a "radical" authority in its Boeing complaint that would have "a chilling effect on our economy."

"It's time we forced the NLRB to change course," he said on the floor.

Many conservatives have vowed to either defund the board or cripple it. Although the House bill would go a long way in accomplishing the latter, it is highly unlikely to pass through a Democrat-controlled Senate.

Nonetheless, business groups have rallied around Republicans on the issue. The labor board has issued a number of decisions and rules in recent months that have rankled the business community, including a rule made public last month that will require employers to post a notice in the workplace informing workers of their rights under labor law.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce designated Thursday's a "key vote," calling it an "important step to reining in the NLRB."

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[Coach]

I actually hope they do get rid of the corporativist NLRB and the Taft-Hartley Act.
By all means, I dare the GOP to bury it.
Then, when the Dems and reformist sellout bureaucracies and their faux-left camp followers can't hide behind it anymore, the door is finally re-opened for REAL INDEPENDENT LABOR MILITANCY/ORGANIZING. No more doing it by their rules, within their institutions. No more class peace from our side, while they wage class struggle against us!

[Admin]

I actually hope they do get rid of the corporativist NLRB and the Taft-Hartley Act.
By all means, I dare the GOP to bury it.
Then, when the Dems and reformist sellout bureaucracies and their faux-left camp followers can't hide behind it anymore, the door is finally re-opened for REAL INDEPENDENT LABOR MILITANCY/ORGANIZING. No more doing it by their rules, within their institutions. No more class peace from our side, while they wage class struggle against us!

I naturally appreciate such considerations (such actions can more or less be regarded as requisite for the instigation of class warfare), but nevertheless find the situation lamentable, due to the harm this will inflict upon the proletariat.

[Coach]

I naturally appreciate such considerations (such actions can more or less be regarded as requisite for the instigation of class warfare), but nevertheless find the situation lamentable, due to the harm this will inflict upon the proletariat.

Without a doubt, it will be painful to the proletariat, and chiefly to blame for that is their "Left" false misleadership.
As you said, the 'Left' is institutionalized. Until these buffer layer institutions are broken or lose credibility with the proletarian masses, they will remain IN OUR WAY, binding and blinding the masses so long as they still have a leg to stand on.
As long as their is some illusion of 'fairness' within the system, it will hold us back. How many decades have the union bosses used legalism (and pointed to the NLRB and courts) to pull a fast one over the workers? That helps the bourgeoisie. It gives them decisive control. It kills any independent fightback initiative and the necessary mass militant tactics and organizing efforts. It's illegal for secondary strikes, for wildcat strikes, for many public sector workers to go on strike at all. Blocking ingress and egress at the entry points of the capitalists' facilities is illegal. Basically, Taft-Hartley and its NLRB ensure that no really serious challenging labor activities can occur legally...and the union bosses have played this card umteen times on their more militant rank and file union members. Then they rally their union bureaucrat thugs to put down any militants that won't shut up and sit down and settle for the wimpy ineffective losing strategy that is being shoved down the union memberships' throat, and what they do to whip up their thugs is say "these troublemakers are trying to cause the union trouble by breaking the law...only agents provacateur working for the company, or commies (everyone knows they're un-American super-bad guys), would do that!"

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