Here's another example of what is going forward while we all giggle
and gawk at Russiagate.
Carl Jarvis
Michael Arria is a reporter who covers labor and social movements.
He's also the author of Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC.
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transcript
Trump Stacking The National Labor Relations Board to Favor Corporations
SHARMINI PERIES: It's the Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries,
coming to you from Baltimore. It would be reasonable to expect that
the head of the Labor
Department and the National Labor Relations Board would be those who
advocate for working Americans, people who will use the power of the
Department and
the National Labor Relations Board to rein in corporate greed and to
improve the lives of ordinary working Americans. Well, while most of
Washington and
its legislators and its press have been preoccupied with Russiagate,
some fundamental changes are taking place that can unravel labor
conditions in this
country for decades to come. Joining me now to take a closer look at
who's who in labor relations these days and in the Trump
administration is Michael
Arria. Michael is a reporter covering labor and social movements. He's
also the author of Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC. Thanks for
joining us, Michael.MICHAEL
ARRIA: Sure, thanks for having me.SHARMINI PERIES: So, Michael, before
we dive into this topic, let's outline what the Labor Relations Board
is and what
it does.MICHAEL ARRIA: Sure. So, the NLRB is the National Labor
Relations Board, was created in the 1930s, 1933, under FDR. It's a
five-person board which
is responsible for interpreting and enforcing labor law in the United
States. It's had a variety of issues throughout the years, but I'd say
in recent
memory, it had become kind of a joke. Under George W. Bush, he had ...
George W. Bush, when president, had refused to appoint some people to
open seats,
and the Democrats controlled the Senate at the time, so they had
refused to confirm some of his appointments. And for a large amount of
time, I think from
December 2007 through June of 2010, the five-member board only had two
members on it, which led to questions regarding its authority, and
ultimately a
legal challenge. The Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that it ... Not only
did the two-member version of the board not have any authority, but
also, none of
the decisions it had made had any authority either.So that was kind of
the state of the NLRB not too long ago. It was not really regarded by
many in labor
as a beacon of hope, to put it mildly. But I think what we've seen,
really, to the surprise of many, since Obama was able to fill out the
remaining seats
on the board, we've seen the NLRB kind of emerge as an effective
interpreter of this kind of current economic landscape we're in. We
have seen them make
all kinds of important decisions that kind of tilt some of the power
back to workers. They ... Very important decision that increased the
organizing rights
of graduate students, a very important decision that increased the
organizing rights of employees at charter school.And perhaps most
importantly, in 2015,
the Browning-Ferris ruling, which kind of chipped away at the legal
barrier between a corporation and its given franchises. So when we
look at movements
like the Fight for $15, or the efforts to organize fast-food workers
and retail workers, there's been attempts by groups like the SEIU to
kind of hold
corporations like McDonald's responsible for the actions of its given
stores, and rulings like this, I think, have been a real breakthrough,
and they've
been, if unexpected, very welcomed by labor. And that might kind of
sound like a long-winded backstory, but I think it's necessary context
to the In These
Times piece I wrote, which is about the fact that the Trump
administration is now poised to not only tilt the balance of power
back to management on the
board, but also potentially undo a lot of these important rulings that
have taken place.SHARMINI PERIES: Michael, honestly, last time I saw
anything related
to the Labor Relations in the mainstream media is when Secretary of
Labor Alexander Acosta was appointed, and some of the controversy
around that. But
media has really dropped the ball on protecting the interests of
ordinary workers, but you have been a unique exception to that. Give
us a sense of who's
getting appointed to the Labor Relations Board that concerns
you.MICHAEL ARRIA: Well, you're definitely right to say that it hasn't
been covered. I'd say
that the ... When we look at the hearing which took place on July
13th, it took place just 10 days after, I believe, the Senate had gone
back into session,
and ... The Senate session had begun just 10 days after the nomination
of one of the nominees, and the other one just four days after, so
there's very
little time to potentially research or vet these two nominations. It
was kind of an unprecedentedly fast-tracked ... In addition to the two
people that
were nominated to the NLRB board, the GOP also bundled in another
nominee to the Labor Department in the same hearing, a guy named
Patrick Pizzella, who
probably deserves a hearing of his own. He worked with the disgraced
lobbyist Jack Abramoff during the 1990s to try to get the North
Mariana Islands exempt
from labor law, kind of a very ugly story there.But this was all kind
of rushed. There was a letter sent to Lamar Alexander, who's the head
of the HELP
Committee, who held the hearings, to ask him for an extension of time
to take a closer look at these nominations, and that was not granted,
so the entire
process was kind of sped up. And the two nominees to the NLRB, the
first one is a guy named William Emanuel, who's a management-side
attorney based in
Los Angeles. He comes from a firm called Littler Mendelson, which has
been notoriously connected to union-busting for decades. He authored
an amicus brief
on class action waivers; class action waivers have actually been
deemed illegal by the NLRB. And when he was nominated, as is
customary, he handed over
a list of clients that he'd worked with that he said he would recuse
himself from if they had cases come up in front of the NLRB, and the
list is full
of corporations which have clashed directly with the NLRB in recent
years: J.P. Morgan, Nissan, probably most prominently Uber.So that's
one of the nominees
to the NLRB, and the other one is a guy named Marvin Kaplan, who
served for the Republicans on the House Committee on Education and the
Workforce, which
held hearings during his tenure scrutinizing many NLRB decisions, and
he was also instrumental in developing a piece of legislation called
the Workforce
Democracy and Fairness Act, which is trying to increase the amount of
time between when a board authorizes a workplace unionization vote and
when that
vote actually takes place. So, since 2014, that space of time has been
11 days, but many people, anti-labor forces are trying to extend that
to at least
35 days so that management can have a little more time to potentially
stomp out any organizing or attempts at creating a union. So that's
the history and
backstory of the two people that were nominated. They both have long
careers connected to anti-labor policies, I'd say.SHARMINI PERIES:
What kind of effect,
or how will the dynamics change with existing members and these new
appointments, as far as you can foresee?MICHAEL ARRIA: Well, it's
difficult to say
for sure. I think this is part of a much wider plan by the Trump
administration to crack down on labor. I mean, you mentioned the new
Labor Secretary earlier.
It was just announced a couple days ago, I think, that he is moving
ahead at undoing the overtime legislation that Obama passed shortly
before leaving
office that would potentially increase the pay of, I think, 4.2
million Americans. We see some of these OSHA rules have already been
folded back, and we
see the ... Trump's budget, which he had revealed, which calls for
deep cuts to the Labor Department, and cuts to these work training
programs.So it's
hard to see how this shakes out, but this is kind of like the last
piece, I think, to the Trump administration's assault on labor,
because up until this
point, they have really not had control of the NLRB, and these ... You
know, we're talking about how the process was kind of sped up, and
there wasn't
much time. These nominees are expected to get confirmed, obviously,
with the Republicans in control. The final vote in the committee was
12 to 11, down
party lines, so everybody, I think, is expecting them to control this
agency soon.SHARMINI PERIES: And on the part of workers and ordinary
citizens, families
of working poor and so on, what can they actually do to protect their
rights, especially if these nominations go through? I just don't think
people are
aware and conscious of these changes that are taking place that can
dramatically change their lives in the years to come.MICHAEL ARRIA:
Yeah, I mean, I
think it's different with every situation, but I actually ... It's
interesting, I think, as the NLRB has kind of changed, and we're
talking about this
story being under-reported, but I'm not sure if any of those Obama-era
advancements were reported very much. There has been a few calls in
various places
for some in labor to focus a little more, maybe, on what's referred to
on the right sometimes as "judicial activism," and maybe try to take
some of what
the NLRB does a little more seriously, and push for new types of
enforcement of these rules.So it's going to be very interesting to see
it play out, and
I think it's especially interesting because Trump has had a very ...
You know, on one hand, it's easy to say that he's leading this assault
on labor; on
the other hand, he courted labor during the campaign in a way that we
really haven't seen from a Republican since Ronald Reagan, and for all
the talk about
how he ran a campaign with no investment in polling and he really
didn't know what he was doing, I think that when we look at labor, it
definitely paid
off. I mean, he got more labor votes than Mitt Romney, or John McCain,
or George W. Bush, or George W. Bush's dad. So we're looking at a kind
of a ...
Like everything with the Trump administration, there's kind of a huge
gulf between the rhetoric and the actual policy, and we see a lot of
focus on the
rhetoric, but I think this is just one of the many examples where we
see the policy kind of passing by without much comment or
reporting.SHARMINI PERIES:
All right, Michael Arria, thank you so much for joining us today and
giving us a snippet of what's going on in the ... As far as the Trump
appointees and
the changes that are taking place in the area of labor. Love to have
you back to discuss more. Thanks so much.MICHAEL ARRIA: Sure, thanks
for having me.SHARMINI
PERIES: And thank you for joining me here on The Real News Network.
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