When the National Labor Relations Board was created decades ago it’s mission was to carry out the national policy of encouraging collective bargaining and union protections for workers under national labor law that guaranteed workers’ union rights. AFL-CIO General Counsel Jon Hiatt says unions are doing everything they can to avoid the NLRB under Bush administration control because the board has been turned into a weapon against workers…

[John Hiatt]: “ What has been going on at the labor board I think accounts for an awful lot of the explanation for why more and more unions are just being driven away from using the agency that is supposed to be protecting workers in their right to choose to have a union.”

Hiatt says a string of recent decisions have leaned heavily against workers…

[Jon Hiatt 2]: “We have seen a set of about 40 – 45 decisions that is remarkable for the consistency of how they lean in every single instance to expanding employer rights, constricting worker rights, cutting coverage of workers from protection under the act, weakening the remedies and penalties that already were so meager to begin with and overall just making it even more difficult for workers to seek union representation through the board’s procedures.”