Around 700 members of the California Nurses Association and other health care workers rallied in downtown Oakland July 11, then marched to the Federal Building.  Speaker after speaker underlined the point that nurses needed union rights to strengthen their ability to advocate for their patients.  Photo by Marcy Rein.

By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Chanting, waving signs and vowing to defend their rights as workers against Republican President George W. Bush and his National Labor Relations Board, thousands of unionists marched nationwide against anti-worker NLRB rulings.

 The protests, from July 10-13, culminated in a march of more than 1,000 people on the board’s office building in downtown Washington, D.C.  The crowd’s chants included “No justice, no peace!” “What’s disgusting?  Union busting!” “Labor Board unfair, George Bush unfair!” and “We don’t hire, we don’t fire.”  Twenty other marches were in cities coast to coast, including Chicago, Buffalo, Oakland, Calif., and Portland, Ore.

In Chicago, protesters signed a mass letter to the NLRB, created by the Chicago Federation of Labor.  In Oakland, more than 700 people, led by California Federation of Labor Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski and the California Nurses Association, marched.

Demonstrators protested the pending NLRB rulings on the three Kentucky River cases, one each involving the Steel Workers, the Boilermakers and the Auto Workers. The rulings will let the Bush-named board redefine who is a “supervisor,” not covered by labor law, and especially which nurses—and other workers—are supervisors.  Marchers also demanded public hearings on the cases, but the NLRB denied that July 13.

The AFL-CIO, which led the marches, and the new Change to Win federation, whose unions supported the D.C. march, contend the NLRB can use the Kentucky River cases to rule that nurses are supervisors and to broaden the definition of “supervisor” so much that 8 million workers would lose federal labor law coverage.   They would face management manipulation, intimidation and firings with no protection, either by unions or by law. 

The Economic Policy Institute said that besides 843,000 registered nurses, other workers at risk include 400,000 computer systems analysts, 152,000 electricians, 124,000 LPNs, 99,000 machine operators, 92,000 assemblers, 77,000 mechanics, 70,000 pharmacists, 50,000 guards, 44,000 freight handlers, 43,000 college teachers and 24,000 editors and reporters.   Not all are unionized, but all would lose labor rights.

Unionists in the D.C. protest included members of the Laborers, the Teachers, IBEW, The Newspaper Guild/CWA’s Washington-Baltimore local, AFSCME, the Bricklayers, the Office and Professional Employees, the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees, the Painters, the Seafarers and AFGE.  Mine Workers, some dressed in Army fatigues, came from six locals in buses from the coal mines of Southwest Pennsylvania, led by UMW President Cecil Roberts.

“You deserve health care you can afford.  You deserve a pension you can count on.  And to win all these things, you deserve the freedom to join a union,” stated AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson, who led the marchers with a giant banner to NLRB’s headquarters.

“You know that, I know that, but George W. Bush, the Bush Dept. of Labor and the Bush NLRB have a different idea,” she said on NLRB’s front steps.  “For five years, they’ve declared war on working families like us.”

Bush’s NLRB “is the most anti-worker, anti-collective bargaining, anti-union board in the 71-year history of the National Labor Relations Act, and it’s time we stopped him,” declared AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff.

“This Kentucky River decision is one more way of taking away our rights” as workers, Chavez-Thompson added. She promised unionists would not take the rulings lying down, but would keep marching and voting to overturn Bush and his allies.

Two nurses also talked about the practical impact of the board’s pending rulings.  California Nurses Association Secretary-Treasurer Martha Kuhl said unions protect nurses “against the power of big corporations…and make no mistake, health care is administered by big corporations.”

Sandra Falwell of the D.C. Nurses Association said nurses know the difference between being a supervisor or not, as do hospitals and patients, but not the NLRB. 
“I don’t have the right to hire and fire,” Falwell commented.  She added that for nurses, “The NLRB should be declared hazardous to your health.”

After the D.C. marchers arrived at NLRB headquarters, 10 leaders, including Acuff, Roberts, AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy and Falwell, blocked its front doors, planning to be arrested for peaceful civil disobedience.  When police refused, the 10, with police cooperation, strode to the middle of the adjacent busy intersection, and linked arms, awaiting the paddy wagons.  But police decided not to arrest them at all, one officer told PAI.  The D.C. march ended peacefully.