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RIBCO
Articles of Interest
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2006-07-13
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Ruling Could Force Members out of Their Labor Unions |
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By Joe Napsha
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Employers could gain a significant advantage over labor unions if the National Labor Relations Board decides to broaden its definition of a workplace supervisor in three pending cases, labor leaders and experts predicted Wednesday.
Labor has a legitimate reason to be concerned about the pending decisions "because it could carve a sizeable number of people in key industries, from union membership," said Marick F. Masters, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh's Katz Graduate School of Business.
The Supreme Court asked the labor board in 2001 to re-evaluate its definition of a supervisor in the three cases known collectively as the Kentucky River cases: two involving healthcare workers and one involving production and maintenance workers.
An estimated 8 million workers across a broad swath of U.S. workplaces could lose their union rights if the majority of the five-member labor board in Washington agrees with employers in the Kentucky River cases, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.
While the decisions will have a broad impact on organized labor, Pittsburgh labor attorney Michael Healy said it most likely will be felt by registered nurses who are charge nurses at hospitals. But, that depends upon details in the decisions, Healy said.
Among those were who could lose their union membership is Cathy Stoddart, a registered nurse at Allegheny General Hospital on Pittsburgh's North Side. Stoddart, of Mingo Junction, Ohio, said patient care would suffer if lead nurses were to become supervisors limited to tending to management matters.
"The labor board wants to steal me from a patient's bedside, to be a manager," said Stoddart, who works with kidney transplant and surgical patients.
Stoddart spoke yesterday at a rally to raise awareness of the labor board's pending decision that could lead hundreds of thousands of union members to chose whether to continue in their current positions or leave the union, United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard told more than 250 people at the USW Building, Downtown.
In 1997, the labor board ruled that registered nurses at the Kentucky River Community Care mental health facility could be union members, but the Supreme Court agreed with an appeals court ruling that the labor board had erred.
"Given the penchant of the (labor relations) board in recent decisions, I think it is likely they will lean on the employers' side. The majority on the board are (President) Bush appointees," Masters said.
The three cases have been under review by the NLRB for three years, and the board does not have a timetable for rendering a decision, said spokeswoman Patricia Gilbert in Washington.
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