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Personnel News

NLRB CWA Media Call

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
June 18, 2013
Filed under ,

CWA President Larry Cohen, NASA Scientist and Activist to Discuss How the NLRB Crisis Hurts Californians, hspd12jpl.org
“The all-out assault on National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is threatening vital on-the-job protections for millions of California workers.
The NLRB is the sole agency responsible for enforcing federal labor law and protecting the rights of 80 million private sector employees nationwide. It’s been under attack by both conservative courts and House Republicans seeking to freeze all agency actions. Now, unless the Senate majority acts to confirm all five nominations to the NLRB before the August recess, the right to organize and bargain, the right to labor law protections, and the right to free speech in the workplace will all be in jeopardy.”

Quote and audio from the call on the next page.

CWA PRESIDENT LARRY COHEN
“It’s up to the Democratic majority in the Senate and the Senate leadership to move forward, particularly on what should be a narrow issue of getting the president’s nominees confirmed.”
“The Senate majority must act in July.”
“I think they are increasingly likely to do it.”
“The NLRB is about to go out of business — literally — in about seven or eight weeks, as the only confirmed member, the chairman’s term, is up.”
Non-union employees have filed “on average 4,500 cases a year for the last 10 years … All too often we focus only on the union members who are covered by the Act, which today is about 6 million. But really this is the key for anyone who wants to speak up, anyone who wants to ask a question about what’s happening at work. They have no protection otherwise.”
ROBERT NELSON, former NASA scientist
“Without the support of the National Labor Relations Board, Caltech would have been free to issue a gag order against all communications between employees – a truly bizarre situation for Caltech which prides itself as a research institute dedicated to free and open inquiry.”
ROBERT ENGLAND, union member and activist
“The NLRB is what protects workers’ right to join together to improve their lives at work, whether it’s our wages or safety on the job. Because of the NLRB, employers can’t get away with lashing out and penalizing workers – whether they’re in a union or not – for exercising this right. That’s why it’s so important to workers.”
Full audio.
Previous NLRB Rules Against JPL on HSPD-12 Actions

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