Michael Hiltzik: It's a happy Labor Day indeed after NLRB cracks down on union election sabotage
For decades, employers have felt free to trample workers' right to organize unions and engage in collective bargaining.
They've fired pro-union workers, threatened to close unionizing plants, subjected workers to surveillance and interrogations about their union activities, and posted menacing security guards around locations of union activity.
All these practices are illegal in the context of union organizing drives, but employers have engaged in them with impunity because the penalties have been almost nonexistent.
No longer.
On Aug. 25, the National Labor Relations Board issued a landmark ruling stating that whenever an employer commits an unfair labor practice while its request for a union election is pending, the board will order the employer to recognize the union without an election and move immediately to contract bargaining.
Union advocates believe the ruling,
