The NLRB Is Suing to Keep States From Protecting Workers’ Rights

TPM Article Topics
1

Originally published at: The NLRB Is Suing to Keep States From Protecting Workers’ Rights - TPM – Talking Points Memo

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. For nine decades, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has stood as the federal government’s primary guardian of workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively. Created in the depths of the Great Depression, the NLRB was designed to be a buffer…

3 Likes
2

Working as designed. Pardon the image, but Grover Norquist must be walking around with a permanent pardon. They are not “drowning the government in a bathtub,” just making sure no agency does the job for which it was created. Except ICE, of course. That’s to keep Stephen Miller permanently tumescent.

10 Likes
3

I would say ICE is a failure, too. Lots of high profile arrests, and terror, but few results. Except contributing to a slowing of the American economy.

10 Likes
4

It’s now the National Labor Restrictions Board.

7 Likes
5

The scope of American failure is pretty astonishing, I have to admit. Our system has, effectively, collapsed and we merely laboring (no pun intended) under the illusion that somehow things will be fixed or okay.

We are not the tough people we insisted we are. We are not the hignly ethical people we shoot our mouths off about. All collapses like ours are not sudden things, so yes, the rot has been there for a long time, but the eagerness of soooo many across the federal government to burn things down is surprising even to the most jaded among us.

It doesn’t end with a bang, but with the sheer obseisance of thousands of techno-bureaucratic Little Eichmanns.

12 Likes
6

It looks like it may take some bloody Labor wars to impress on the oligarchs ( I call them OLEOgarchs, because they are fake and they are slimy) both inside our government and in the Board Rooms that we have had enough of their billion dollar salaries while cheating the workers out of fair wages. The greedy reichwing never learns from history. They keep thinking that they can get away with being greedy assholes forever. WRONG!

7 Likes
7

Another lawsuit waiting in the wings? Congress should sue arguing that it’s laws are being ignored.

7 Likes
8

Same approach as the Federal Communications Commission, which repudiated its authority over Internet services back in Trump One, but is still trying to pre-empt state net neutrality initiatives and low-cost rate option requirements. The good new is that so far the courts (including the Supremes) have mostly sided with the states.

8 Likes
9

What if attempts to restrict the states from protecting workers make it to the Supreme Court, and the court adopts Kavanaugh’s view that protective measures like the Civil Rights Act of 1965 expire at the end of some undetermined period of time? I’m sure some of the Supremes would be just fine in overturning part or all of the NLRA. Republicans in government have constantly been engaged in a campaign to erode or abandon the New Deal of 90-plus years ago. This is not new with the Trump regime.

5 Likes
10

Not mention the day to day sniveling cowardice of whiny, entitled people who’ve been told how “exceptional” they are so many times that they decided anything they did must also be exceptional, even if that means spouting ignorant horseshit or sitting on their fat, stupid asses.

3 Likes
11

Nebraska dairy farmer can’t find any workers.

“Who’s gonna milk my cows? I’m going bankrupt”

You are, buddy.

Cry me a river. You voted for this

6 Likes
12

The moo cow herd gets milked twice a day, every day of the year. The milk handling equipment has to be cleaned and sanitized every day. Cow poop has to be washed out of the dairy. The herd has to be fed and watered. And so on.

Reliable dairy workers are hard to come by. Their dedication is worth more than they are paid.

ETA: AI ranks right up there with cow poop to help out here. I suppose RFK Jr. could offer up some great reasons to skip the sanitation requirements. It’s not just the dairy farmers who are losing out. We hundreds of millions of consumers have taken for granted that we will always be able to drive over to the store and get wholesome dairy products at a reasonable price. It never fails to amaze how such a Great Businessman ™ can take a perfectly good national resource and screw it up every single time.

5 Likes
13

Thanks for that insight. My HS in NW NJ had cows in the front yard, but never dealt with them.

Baled some hay in the early 70s.

Was weird as we were in NYC a lot and Dad flew for PanAm out of JFK.

2 Likes
14

Dairy cows learn their routine and are mostly docile. They still weigh a half ton and can spook. They can also kick sideways. They don’t care if you are sick or lame; they hve to be milked. If the truck doesn’t show up, the milk gets dumped. There used to be small dairies around here that would process the milk and bottle it for local grocers to sell. It got to where they couldn’t afford glass half gallon bottles anymore.

4 Likes
15

Useful info. Thanks!

2 Likes
16

Also, I’m so old we had a milkman with a milkbox on the front stoop. (North Jersey suburbia) I was told I would get up at the crack of dawn and sit out on the milkbox and wave to the neighbors going to work and greet the milkman. (3 years old)

Mom & Dad put a chain lock high on the door I couldn’t reach LOL

2 Likes
17

And the dumbass peon MAGArats thought Daddy Trump was going to take care of them…they must be the biggest group of rubes, fools, and suckers in the history of the world. Is this where Gump’s Law applies? “Stupid is as stupid does.”

1 Like
18

American democracy has always been aspirational. Now it is besieged by millions who believe they are entitled to the fruits of a finished democracy that does not, in fact, exist. They don’t want to do the work, they don’t want to respect those who have worked at those aspirations for hundreds of years, and they have absolutely no clue about any of it. They have handed it over to the greedsters, to the mobsters, to the monsters, to the people they call Daddy, and shout, “Gimme mine!”

3 Likes
19

Cult 101. Straight out of the textbook.

1 Like
20

I was watching the Bears beat Eagles at a local bar Friday and got into a discussion on economic subjects that touched on this very issue with White working class men. Not surprisingly, I was outnumbered 10 to 1 and managed to prove with the help of google fact checking that Trump was robbing them. Their response was to accuse me, as that could be the only reason I supported their rights over Trump and Republican redistribution of income from them to the rich, that I must be hiding illegal immigrants in my home.

The first thing that comes to mind when I read this story about the NLRB changing from protecting workers rights to becoming a tool for business to club workers back in line is that most of those affected by the NLRB voted for Trump and are the reason he is and was ever president.

With the above in mind, what Trump and Republicans are and have been doing since Theodore Roosevelt, the first president and last Republican president to use federal power to protect workers rights, is trying to make the federal Government a tool of oligarchs to club workers back in line.

For those who know American history, this has been a key battle between Democrats and Republicans since Woodrow Wilson made the Democrats the progressive party. (I know, Wilson was also an unapologetic racist which to a great extent undermined his other accomplishments)

For those who remember FDR and his attempt to “pack the court”, it was over this very issue, the Supreme Court invalidated New Deal protections for workers. It is these very protections that eventually FDR was able to give the White working man that gave rise to the White middleclass.

That 90 years after FDR and Democrats gave power and wealth to what is now the base of the Republican Party and includes most of the cultists supporting Donald Trump, which is intent on taking away their wealth and power given to them by Democrats, forces me to ask why I should give a shit.

So long as workers can be divided over race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and place of birth, American workers will continue to lose out to more powerful united interests. Furthermore, for this to change, the same White middle and working class dependent on protections given them by Democrats and now being taken away by Republicans they put in power, those working and middle class White people will need to change.