Reuters is reporting that the office of the General Counsel for the National Labor Relations Board has recommended that allegations brought by employees at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant be dismissed.
The latest chapter in the ongoing saga involving the UAW’s attempted organization of the plant involves eight VW’s hourly employees alleging that
“…the UAW coerced them and misled them to sign cards approving the union’s representation of them. Also, four workers alleged that VW, through a German union representative who sits on the company’s supervisory board, threatened them by linking approval of the UAW as union representatives to future work at the plant.”
According to Reuters, the recommendation to dismiss the allegations will now go to a regional panel, but the workers are planning on appealing the ruling. The allegations stem from an incident that the workers allege involved duplicitous practicing regarding union cards. Observers say that if the ruling is upheld, it could pave the way for a worker vote on UAW representation.
Oh ok so mafia style intimidation tactics are Federally approved, glad we cleared that up.
Psychotic thugs with guns and jails voted in by retarded parasites…Government is a Mafia. What else could it possibly be? Everyone trying to vote themselves the earned property of everyone else. Thug Democrats get huge piles of money from Union Thugs…Their biggest contributors.
Lemme get this straight. Of the two major parties, the one that concerns you with its anti-citizen tendencies and the excessive power of its contributors’ money is… the Democrats?
As for the deliberately inflammatory phrasing of “everyone trying to vote themselves the earned property of everyone else”: First, like a chain letter, this scenario obviously is mathematically impossible. Second, its substance is ridiculously false in light of the lavishly documented fact that the gap between the richest 1/10,000th of Americans and all the rest of us is the largest in the nation’s history, and one of the largest of any industrialized nation. I assure you that not a one of those 1/10,000th has made his or her billions through union leadership. However, a great many of them have made those billions specifically through a strategy of gutting unions and stripping their legal protections. (If you’re unaware of this, you haven’t read enough yet about the Walton dynasty. Go do so and then come back.)
It is not a coincidence that while union membership as a percentage of the population has plunged by two-thirds over the last few decades, so has the bargaining power and relative income of working Americans. I am neither poor nor a union member, but I think it’s incontestable by any rational parsing of the evidence that nearly all Americans have suffered economically, and will continue to do so, by the super-rich’s conquest of unionism in this country. And those who are not billionaires, yet side with billionaires’ interests against their own, are the unwitting handmaidens of their own continued slide into ruin. What they are espousing is not an judgment, but rather a religion — and like many other religions, this one is not devised for the benefit of the faithful.
I haven’t suffered, but that is because your party keeps shipping me off to wars it claims to have ended which assuming I don’t get blown up tend to be good for my wallet. Why do you suppose that is…It couldn’t be that the Democrats are as beholden to big Defense as the evil warmongering Republicans. Funny how all the war protests ended in 2009 yet the wars continue and before you say they don’t I have deployment orders that say otherwise.
Wake up and smell the toast burning…Neither party gives a rats kiester about you or me. If you make it, it is in spite of them.
My purpose is not to defend the Democratic Party. I have plenty of quarrels with that party and its president as well, and most of them center around my agreement with you that it, too, is far too much in thrall to Big Defense and all-around corporate Big Money.
If you re-read my post, it requires no great love of the Democratic Party in order to agree with it. It has much more to do with what I think of ad hominem attacks on labor unionism than with political parties.
Let me add specifically: I share your disgust with the way our citizens in the military, including you, are being ill-used as cannon fodder for the war machine’s continued enrichment. And I’ve taken to these here Internets to say so before… that is, before the compliantly pro-corporate “regulators” slay Net Neutrality and take that away from us, too.
Well I can buy that. I have some issues with big labor but realize that all unions and union members are not the same.
Sir You have only scratched the surface. Isn’t it strange that for the 99% of us, our wages have not increased as much as the TOP 1% for the last 30 years? You Right Wing GOP Tea Baggers blame the takers or the 47%’ers or whoever for your woes, yet these people don’t have any control over your pay. I saw bumper sticker that said this, “Only Millionaires and fools vote Republican” For those who call themselves Republicans or Tea Baggers, I have a question for you. What do you have in common with the 1%? Do you belong to the same Yacht Club? Race your horses in the Kentucky Derby each year? You both have second homes in Aspen on Spain? How is it when common Joes or Janes want a union this is any of your concern? The common Joes and Janes have more in common with you that you do with the Kock Brothers or Paris Hilton. I am curious what goes though your heads when you think of articles like the one above?
@JD321- Excuse me? You’re calling Democrats thugs after all of the things that their Republican counterparts have done to gut the middle class in this country?
Either you’ve been under a rock all along or you’re listening too much to AM radio talking heads/Fox News.
Um…sorry, but Fox News is where the truth is…Its ok to cry a bit, as the truth CAN hurt…
This government will tolerate no dissent. It’s really shocking how blatant it has become.
It seriously is shocking.
28 sir, respectfully, you know not what you speak.
Please expand on your point.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/stripgenerator/strip/61/36/37/00/00/full.png
Like A Sir.
Hey 28, something like mike saíd. People dissapearing in the middle of the night (únrtil today unfound), previous gov censorship of any art., movie, book, newspaper. Infiltration into universities, uncommunicated detention of opposition.leaders, exile, gov pressure on courts, no gov accountability. Little things like that.p
We haven’t reached the stage of Operation Condor which as a CIA sponsored operation unfortunately swept through South America in the 1960s and 70s but some of the elements you named have happened in the United States. This is shocking for folks who grew up here to see in the open.
The automotive bailouts had an enormous amount of political pressure over them, and no matter the outcome some of what was done was grossly illegal. Universities have been infiltrated by political agitators, and have been since at least the 1990s. Our government was revealed to be openly spying on us and most of the world every day. We were forced into major healthcare legislation so opposed by the American people it spawned an entire political movement. People talk seriously in the open about secession from the federal gov’t. Our IRS tax agency was revealed to be persecuting people and groups opposed to the current gov’t in power. In no way do I imply we the American people have suffered the way the people of South America suffered during Operation Condor, but just the things I named would have been unthinkable (at least in the open) fifteen to twenty years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
I don’t disagree, but govs have done that and more throughout history. Even your own gov. Treatment of Indians, californios, nippo-americans etc. However, in the US you have always had the courts and free press were always there. Not só much in other placas. Fact of the matter is, and aftar this I’ll say no more as this is not my fight, the mythical América you speak of was just that, a myth. Your country is now a much more complicated place than it was even ten years ago. You probably need more gov not less. Just my opinion.
“We were forced into major healthcare legislation so opposed by the American people it spawned an entire political movement. ” And yet in 2012 Democrats retained the Presidency and GAINED two senate seats. Healthcare did have something to do with the Tea Party but deficits (especially those incurred after November 2008) was the primary aim. Immigration also has fallen into their sphere. They as a movement have morphed over time.
What part of the auto bailout was “grossly” illegal. Surely the Supreme Court (with a Conservative majority) could rule on this.
@Marcelo
What happened to the Native Americans was nothing short of war crimes, and although few of my ancestors were here to take part I am indeed ashamed about what happened. Our gov’t and society certainly did no favors to those other folks either but this is all to broad of a topic to discuss here. Perhaps in some respects America was always mythical as you point out, maybe it was always an illusion.
@mike978
I’m not going to get into a pissing contest because it solves nothing, both parties work toward the same ends. The so called Tea Party would not exist if not for the gov’t insistence to do what it wanted in 2009/10. One of the goals of the bill was obfuscation of new taxes and legislation on things unrelated to healthcare. I’m not a licensed lawyer to debate the legality of the law under US statute, but I hold no illusions about the Supreme Court being above reproach. The illegality of the automotive bailouts stems from the suppression of bondholders order of precedence in the process, look it up. The whole gov’t system is rotting from the inside and there’s not a damn thing any of us can do about it but sit back and watch the show.
Marcelo on another note, if you can find time do another Brazil themed article I do enjoy them. Maybe review a model we can’t get in the US or something.
Thanks for the support 28. I am very deeply engaged with my things though. And don’t worry, even if América was just a dream, it sure was a beautiful one. In many, many ways, it still is.
“This government will tolerate no dissent” and yet plenty of people do dissent, as you ably show.
Maybe Marcelo is speaking of living in a country that had a military dictatorship. Your hyperbole doesn`t do justice to those who have or currently do live under conditions you ascribe to the USA.
I cannot relate to living under a junta, what I can say is just between 1999 and now its shocking how blatant and partisan the US gov’t has become. Not the congress, not the politicians, but the agencies, the political appointees, the unelected czars etc.
Glad you admit you don`t live under a junta. I agree partisanship has increased, but there have always been political appointees (I am surprised for example that ambassador’s are appointees rather than meritocratic civil servants like other countries) and they are going to be political since it is in the name!
Unelected czars started under Reagan didn`t they (drug war or I may be mistaken)?
The march to the abyss started long ago and is not specifically tied to a political party. In a partisan argument, the Bush administration created the Gitmo prison but the current administration pledged to close it. The result is still the same.
“On 7 January 2011, President Obama signed the 2011 Defense Authorization Bill, which, in part, placed restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to the mainland or to foreign countries, thus impeding the closure of the facility.[18] In February 2011, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that Guantanamo Bay was unlikely to be closed, due to opposition in the Congress.[19] Congress particularly opposed moving prisoners to facilities in the United States for detention or trial.[19] In April 2011, Wikileaks began publishing 779 secret files relating to prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.[20] As of December 2013, 155 detainees remain at Guantanamo”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp
They are selectively applying the laws to their political enemies. Speak out against them, and you may get an IRS audit. You may be fine with it now, since you’re on their side. But what about when the tables are turned?
I agree he said he would close Gitmo. Congress disagreed and prevented that by law. Shows he is not all powerful, nor should he be. At least the numbers in Gitmo have been significantly reduced over time. Now if he was truly evil and bad and this was Nazi Germany then CJ, Hannity, Limbaugh, Malkin and Coulter would be there. They are not, that says something.
As for the IRS thing, they looked at both Liberal and Conservative groups using certain parts of the tax code for political purposes. It was found that no groups had lost their status. The IRS has a duty to check if groups or people are obeying the rules. This was also done by a small group in Ohio and if say Governor Christie cannot know what his top aides are doing in NJ, then how can you expect the President with over 4 million federal employees to know what someone is doing in OH. I include this last point because some “conservatives” have tried to say Christie cannot know what everyone on his payroll is doing, well lets be consistent and have the same apply to the President.
28-
The President saying that GITMO should be closed was never anything more than talk. Even during the 2008 campaign it was clear he was never going to move all of the prisoners. There has never a plan on what to do with those at GITMO, and it was always going to take too many people to get it done.
There is plenty of land and a few old prisons in Northern Michigan, we’d be happy with a few more jobs. If you think Detroit looks bad, take a look at Northern Michigan towns that were dependent on mining, logging, had one auto supplier, or built something that’s now made in China. Ghost towns…
@chris
Exactly.
@mike
“Congress disagreed and prevented that by law.” …with a law the President signed according to Wikipedia. If he wanted to dissent he had the choice of veto or to let it sit for ten days without his signature. He evidently gave his signature and consented.
“Once the President has received a bill passed by Congress, he may sign it into law or veto it within 10 days. He may also allow the bill to become law without a presidential signature by failing to act within 10 days (if Congress is in session).”
http://www.familiesusa.org/resources/tools-for-advocates/tips/how-a-bill.html
@bball40dtw
I agree it was rhetoric and I never expected it to happen, but the drones who praise him never seem to also point out the administration’s shortcomings. Since we’re on the subject, Detroit itself would make an interesting prison for the Gitmo detainees. Something like a real life version of “The Running Man”, heck we could probably get Schwarzenegger to host it.
You are correct he signed the authorization bill into law with this attached. If he has refused to sign or veto then the armed forces wold not have beenfunded. Imagine what would have been said then. Congress since the start has added riders to bills and the trick for them is to add something not so objectionable that kt vetos the whole bill.
I agree with you about the promise of America. It is still worth striving for.
@Mike, If you think Christie and Obama didn’t both know you are crazy.
And as for his inability to close Gitmo…Didn’t he say He had a Phone and a Pen? In all seriousness, GITMO is DOD run so I am reasonably confident an Executive Order actually could shut it down. He’d probably have to release everyone but as his administration has claimed the War on Terror to be over (I heard that in a bunker in Kandahar BTW), this should not be an issue.
@chris724- Are you also living under a rock as well?
I think that TTAC should have a rule and that rule is: NO POLITICS.
Why?
Because it always devolves into partisan (usually Democrat) bashing. There are plenty of forums for you to vent your anger toward the government. Why must TTAC be one of them?
If only there were some media where people could write their views and within reason have these views displayed for all to see. I tell you this Obama guy is a dictator. A dictator who campaigned for months, won the majority of the votes in an open and free election with the will and consent of those to the governed. This is what passes as a dictator on Fox News and AM radio.
And it’s been so since the Wagner Act was enacted.. Dog bites man.
Yes. Now go get your F’in Shine Box!!!
Is the Union representation vote for the VW plant in TN actually at risk if these 8 votes were to be disqualified?
I mean, it DOES matter if duplicitous tactics were used to approve such a vote, even if the 8 protesting card-signers’ disqualification don’t matter, as others may have been swayed by such arguments. But if there are a great enough number of signatories above the bare minimum required to hold a Union representation vote for said plant, then I say you hold the vote and punish any misdeeds severely afterwards.
We live in Nazi Germany.
I must have missed the yellow stars and the concentration camps. When do we invade Canada for lebensraum?
Not quite yet but we’ve moved far beyond our traditional democracy toward cronyism.
What “traditional democracy”? America has been about cronyism for about as long as we’ve had an organized government. No, we’re not Nazi Germany (and I don’t even know what that means) but man has always treated the man he knows better than a stranger.
True but the illusion that your vote counts and your gov’t has your best interests in mind was either somewhat truer in the past or was simply believed by more.
Same for the illusion that there is a difference between Ds and Rs.
Exactly.
More believed than truer. The difference being the the internet, 24 hour news cycles and the need to fill both with something.
And your vote counting in a representative republic only goes as far as you voting for the majority. Nothing new here.
28, to one of the points you made above:
I think your point is perfectly valid about both parties participating in the shaping of a government that is breaking the law and trampling Americans’ rights on a grand scale, and I do not exempt the current president from that assessment.
But I will make a specific exception for the auto industry bailout. As I’ve said before, I don’t think it’s fair to judge it solely on the basis of whether it was defensible as a profit/loss investment or as business-as-usual. We were dangling on the precipice of an outright economic collapse, the banks would not lend, and the nation’s #1 industrial employer was about to permanently die. Saving it, even at a cost to taxpayers, was by far the better long-term decision for the nation’s economic health. Compare that expenditure with, say, buring nuclear missiles in a mountainside, building servers to spy on your phone calls, or donating a trillion dollars of your money to save corrupt Wall Street bankers who instead deserved to be Mike Tyson’s wife somewhere. In that context, I have no problem with the auto bailout whatsoever.
That would explain the squadron of Stukas that just bombed the houses over on the next block.
Buy war bonds!
All I want is peace, peace, peace…
A little piece of Poland! A little piece of France! A little piece of Austria and Hungary by chance!
A little lebensraum never hurt anyone…
Nyet, tovarich.
Is Soviet Union, and is wave of future. Is government ensuring rights of glorious workers and peasants.
And Godwin’s Law comes into play in just three posts.
I lost family in the Holocaust. My father was among the detachment from Patton’s Third Army, US 9th Armored Infantry to step foot in Buchenwald. You have no idea what a Nazi regime looks like.
Although the victims of the concentration camps are largely remembered as Jews and certain ethnic Eastern Europeans (mostly Soviet POWs but Roma aka Gypsies, etc.) what most people seem to selectively choose to forget is that the concentrations camps were filled with homosexuals, intellectuals, educators, and trade union leaders.
Your post, over the complaint of eight individuals over a possible vote for union implementation, that the parent company VW is lets not forget basically encouraging, is disgusting.
Nazi Germany? Not even close.
My grandmother lived in Nazi-occupied Austria, and she was the first one to sound a warning about this regime in spite of having been an MA Democrat from the time she emigrated. You should be concerned that our media has become a propaganda arm of the administration, that elderly Jews are randomly beaten on the street while the media and law enforcement look the other way, that law enforcement is now a tool for settling political animosities as are other regulatory agencies. Many of the voting contingency of these jackals are worse off now than they were at the depth of the recession, but disarming the population and job killing initiatives are still prioritized over all proven economic policies. The military is fighting for reasons nobody in the regime can articulate, but the there is plenty of time spent vilifying Americans that know why we have a constitution. We’re much closer than you think. How many Germans didn’t go with the flow like you are?
Some of this is true, although I wasn’t aware of elderly people being specifically assaulted.
The military fights a series of wars for (1) bankers to profit on gov’t debt and (2) justify the legitimacy of the state. This has been the playbook for at least the last six hundred years of human history.
You really do have an excess of hyperbole. So because of Obama “elderly Jews are randomly beaten” – has this increased compared to years previously? Also strange since anti-semitism is typically associated with the right and most Jews are Democratically leaning.
Disarming the population – please show me where guns have been taken, or where it is proposed that guns be taken from citizens? I do not count having a background check for mentally ill or criminal people to count.
Most law enforcement is state or local, so I don`t think Obama has much sway in say Texas.
“You should be concerned that our media has become a propaganda arm of the administration” – yes because the 50 million that listen to talk radio or watch Fox News are such a small, persecuted minority. I am amazed you live in California, which is like ground zero for you. You really need to move to Wyoming or somewhere else.
“The military is fighting for reasons nobody in the regime can articulate,” these wars were started by the prior administration (or should I say regime as you like that word and Bush not popularly elected the first time, unlike Obama). This administration has not started any new wars (bombing Libya was not a major conflict).
There’s so much wrong with what you just said, every point in fact.
So much so, I actually feel embarrassed for you.
Exactly. If one wants to see where the hotbed of Anti-Semitism is in America, do a search on Fox News, find the story about the concerns being raised about increased sales of Mein Kampf, and then read the comment sections.
The comment section as a secular Jew was terrifying me – but it wasn’t left wing Obama drones dishing out the hate.
A five second Google search reveals that Anti-Semitism in the United States started increasing in 2002.
http://archive.adl.org/presrele/asus_12/4109_12.html#.UuLY1E3TmHs
But who can trust the Anti-Defamation League on stuff like this?
Clearly, the ADL is in on the scheme and cooking the statistical books, working with Obama back in the 1990’s, to grow the hate so when he became President, we could start building the re-education camps.
If this is an Anti-Semitic regime, when exactly are we going to stop foreign aide into Israel, and stop playing whack-a-mole with Israel’s enemies. Oh I get it – it’s a false flag operation.
Pass the tinfoil around, time to put on the hats. Never mind the “endless” wars were engaged in started with a different administration, and after pulling our troops out of Iraq, the situation is falling apart (did anyone even read the story in the liberal media at ABC about how Fallujah is in the full control of AQ again – or how the US is doing secret night flights into Baghdad delivering tons and tons and tons of weapons to the Iraqi military, which is losing the fight). Gee, funny, I didn’t hear that on Hannity today or see it on the Fox News site.
His grandma lived in occupied Austria – ya – tough gig. My relatives went up in smoke in Poland. My father was tormented by decades of PTSD that no amount of cigarettes or alcohol could burn from his brain.
The hyperbole is stunning.
Hummer – I used to feel embarrassed for him, but he doesn`t seem to have a filter and sees everything as either fantastically good (Honda) or totally evil (BMW, Obama). No middle ground or moderation.
APaGttH : +1
Reading comprehension is your strong suit mike978.
I see that they’re now selling jackboots (to Aryans, at least) at the Nike Store. Things are looking up!
Will there be a Jordan Melo edition Jackboot? I’ll wait in the ration line for that!
No way, Hitler would not stand for the low quality crap that VW, which he founded, is putting out these days.
“We live in Nazi Germany.”
Oh yeah, and let’s not forget the black helicopters, and the secret symbols on road signs to guide the invaders.
After all, each of these paranoid delusions must be true…..
The NLRB has its own problems. Not just this decision…but many since the board member majority given to it by Obama appointments during the questionable Obama declared congressional recess is now before the US Supreme Court and could likely result in many board decisions being erased going pretty far back.
This whole NLRB thing could turn ugly.
I know squat about U.S. labour laws. So can’t say one way, or the other. I do, however know a little about “Blue collar culture”. Reading between the lines, this sounds like a classic “he said, she said, case”.
It’s an effort by a right wing political group (National Right to Work Foundation) to keep the union out.
If the NLRB is headed by a political appointee, shouldn’t a judge decided these sort of things?
Mikey
I am not a union person in my line of work but a simple question why don’t they just vote yes or no on a union and settle it. It seems to me the workers do not want a union but I could be wrong. Not trying to be a a@@ just asking is there such as thing as a fair vote on either side ???
The bill to allow this wash quashed by the republicans.
The reports have been filed and the studies done. When unions are allowed a vote they overwhelming are voted in. It isn’t 100% as is anything in life but the right which is both vehemently anti-union and anti-worker (as they favor management and the capitalist owner class) has made every effort to complicate votes like this. In fact in every major independent study done it has been found again, overwhelming so that it is management that violates the rights of individuals in order to avoid having a union. They have their reasons, mostly monetary as paying a worker a fair wage is less for the company’s bottom line but as fortune 500s have shown that their capacity for profit is near unlimited the issue of money is more a red herring. In the end for them it is control, for good and bad. They (as the rulers) want to move the pawns as they see fit and for whatever motives ignoring safety, health, and a reasonable wage.
The right-wing comments here are all hyperbolic because when you look at the issue from a barebones perspective it blows apart their logic and leaves them with severely broken rationale.
I was just wondering the same thing… have a secret-ballot election and be done with it. If these workers truly were intimidated into signing election authorization cards, surely they won’t vote for the union when the actual election occurs, and that’ll settle it.
Exactly.
Seth1065 and others:
to take the politics out of it:
Pepsi officials know that Coke dominates the workplace. They go around to workers and encourage them to sign cards that will “give them the opportunity to select the machines in the breakroom”. the workers, good americans who willingly engage in the democratic process, sign those cards. Other workers actually read the cards and refuse to sign them. Those workers receive threats, and some will sign off, just to get Pepsi off their backs. Pepsi then announces the cards were actually in support of Pepsi, and declares the shop to be a Pepsi shop. The workers are pissed, but the union has their signatures. If the vote had been taken, Coke would have likely won.
they can’t strongarm you in the voting booth, so they strongarm or trick you into supporting an election that’ll never occur.
If a union can get 50% of the workers to sign cards, then the union can call the shop unionized. if the union knows they’ll lose a straight election, they may choose to strongarm or trick workers into signing the cards, instead.
But there DOES need to be an election before the union will be authorized, (unless mgmt. chooses to simply let the union form) no matter what the cards say.
Yes, the unions have been trying to get this changed via legislation, but I don’t see it happening any time soon; it goes against even the most basic notions of democracy.
Except Tennessee is a Right to Drink Coke state, so no matter how the vote goes they can’t force you to drink Pepsi or put money in the Pepsi machine.
Even if the plant does unionize, Tennessee law allows individuals to choose not to join the union. Not sure how much peer pressure gets applied “encourage” membership, but the UAW can’t assume they’ll automatically collect dues from all workers.
Speaking of Coke. Don’t kid yourselves. If snorting Coke could double productivity in the work place, you would fine lines on your desk every day, supplied by your employer. All the Anti-drug government propaganda would quietly disappear and Coke use would be promoted at the cost of your job if you refused.
Except you can’t cite a serious case of Pepsi browbeating people while your management has hundreds of cases of enforcing coke because of the kickback on every can and bottle sold.
Look, I know analogies are how we explain complex things but your analogy has been proven time and again unrealistic. Even the NLRB under right-wing presidents had more cases of worker intimidation by management than any union official. In fact the odds of being intimidated by a manager are so lopsided to even argue that unions are systemic in that action is foolhardy.
The Supremes are reviewing Recess Appointments made by Obama.
If they rule that the Senate was in session as it was by historic rules, NLRB appointees will be out as well as their rulings.
And we can only hope that will happen.
Some of the rulings regarding social media allow employees to post downright false, defamatory statements about the employer (NLRB v. American Medical Response), and in some cases, even reveal confidential information (NLRB v. Costco). Want to fire the employee? Be careful, lest the NLRB decides the employee’s online disclosure is “protected concerted activity.”
I’m not saying that employers should be able to exert control over what an employee does on his or her Facebook account on his or her own time, but it’s ridiculous that an employee could possibly get away with posting falsehoods and privileged information (including YOUR customer information), or at the very least, put an employer through an expensive defense to ensure the employee’s rights weren’t violated.
Godwin would love this thread. Those interested in the truth, not so much.
Yes, pch, agreed.
Truth is easy as stated above. Secret ballot vote, independent review of the results. If it fails or passes in a landslide, then we have a good indication on who is lying in the he said he said. If it falls in the middle then it was more likely a tempest in a teapot.
I hear that VW if bringing back the German staff cars again, errr the Thing. The VW Thing.
Too bad about the nazi/commie comments. The grubby little NLRB “recess” appointment power play doesn’t quite herald the arrival of national or international socialism. Still worth opposing. If the Supreme Court decides that it “is the Senate’s role to determine whether they’re in recess” as suggested by Justice Kagan, then the past two years decisions by the NLRB are probably down the toilet. Each branch of government has its prerogatives and although the doormat formerly known as Harry Reid didn’t object to the Presidential usurpation of Senate power, others did.
Right, Chuckrs. We’re not in the Third Reich. But the current Administration does operate as a Chicago-style gangster government in the service of self-interest and statism. It has little or no self-restraint or shame, facilitated as it is by major organs of the news media in voluntary thrall and by almost half the population either inseparably married to the benefits of power or unwilling to reconsider beliefs.
All through Eric Holders’ tenure as Attorney General I have been often reminded of a long-ago observation that the external office the Chicago Machine is most desirous of keeping in friendly hands is the Cook County prosecutor.
It sounds like Kagan (an Obama nominee) has it right. That doesn’t fit into the narrative of all nominee/appointees being corrupt, partisan etc.
National healthcare is self interest? Many flaws with Obama but this one act may be the greatest thing done for all Americans since the great society or the Civil rights act – it is that historic.
National healthcare?
Oh, its historic all right.
So was the Volstead Act.
I’m from this part of the country, and I can tell you one of the most tired old canards about Obama is that he’s a “Chicago machine politician.”
First, the Chicago machine as it operated under Richard J. Daley is dead. Second, when Obama was here, he wasn’t part of the junior Daley’s cabal anyway. He’s basically a Harvard guy who was just passing through to burnish his resume. There’s a lot wrong with this president and his administration, but this particular label lends a lot more heat than light.
Agreed that Obama is not a “Machine Politician” but he is a “Machine- Style” politician. Just ask Alice Palmer, Blair Hull or Jack Ryan (the politician, not the spy character)
The NLRB is operating as a payback apparatus for the unions.No surprise about a pro-union decision.
Carl Kolchak,
Obama isn’t using the NLBR for much of anything. In fact, he lacks a commitment to it altogether, to the point where he willingly surrrendered his first choices for its membership as part of a horse trade. He’s never been a strongly pro-union president. And as I elaborated near the top of this thread, if he’s conducting a “payback apparatus for the unions,” he’s doing a damn poor job of it.
Which by default was holding a parliamentary rule to avoid allowing the executive branch to fill out its duties. Stop trying to play this out as some high moral qualm. If your man had won and democratic held up the nomination process so that in your 2nd term you still hadn’t appointed everybody you rightfully could you would be frothing in anger. This is purely partisan politics at its worse. Stop the BS.
Robert Moore, the former head of GreenPeace once said that it does not matter if something is true, what matters is if people believe it is true.
Aren’t all of the NLRB’s rulings at risk of being thrown out anyway if the Supreme Court rules the recess appointments of several of the board’s members to be unconstitutional, which court watchers seem to see as a real possibility? This could be moot.
This battle is far from over. After more than 30 years of neoliberalism and corrupt corporate controlled government, Americans are waking up and shifting slightly to the left. The NRTW ( funded by the grotesquely wealthy) is well aware of this trend and will spend whatever it takes to squash this movement, as is evident here (We’re talking about EIGHT employees!). Unfortunately for them the genie is out of the bottle and many Americans have realized that “supply side economics” and the “less government lower taxes” facade are never going to resurrect the “American Dream”! Organized labour can be a very powerful force and the fact that Unions are are coming together globally scares the hell out the Koch brothers and the uber rich, and they will forfeit BILLIONS to keep the status quo. It is obvious that the significance of this battle and the powerful people behind it are beyond the scope of the many commenters on this site. I would suggest that a dive into American history and the elimination of the corporate controlled main stream media in your diet is in order.
The whole idea behind “Republican” and “Democrat” gangs is to heard the tax cattle into two squabbling factions. When the tax cattle are fighting each other, their owners have nothing to worry about. It is shocking how well that works for them…Still.
My my. People get awfully exercised at the prospect that someone who assembles the cars in which we entrust our lives gets $17 dollars an hour.
I’m kind of thinking that is pretty difficult to intimidate and coerce blue collar guys in Tennessee.
P.S. a street named after Ferdinand? A heavily unionized european company that gets all bent out of joint at the prospect of American unions? What a screwed up company. No wonder their cars stink.
The whole thing is very simple. 55% of people are employed by small and medium sized businesses. These companies now pay between state federal city etc over 50% in taxes and in NYC 63%. If youy want middle class jobs its not going to come from big corporations, they are getting efficient using mechanization etc. Yes they may employ a few more here an there, but it wont soleve the issue. How many people does it take to run a steel mill these days or build a car, compared to say 50 years ago.
High paying or good payting jobs come when there is excess demand for employess over what is available. We have to stop hampering inovation. That means stop favring big enties and allow small ones to grow. Currently big corps have the scale to ousource and have profits offshore.
Smmall companues which actualy do the employing pay huge taxes and local labor rates. Allow these companies to grow.
Instead like europe we are taxing and legislaying small enterprise out of exstance, or certainly removing the desire to start a company as opposed to workig for a big corporation or gov.
Look at the regularory enviroment in Europe and the tax rate, you will see a corolation to the chronicaly high unemployment rate.
One again big companies and entities will not create the good paying jobs. What is needed is an enviromet conductive to small and medium buisness.
As to the 1%, the real villans are not he doctors lawyers and other professionals who are the majority of the so called one percent, these peopel are actulay upper middle class, with bills to pay like everyone else. It is the propaganda of the poltical class to equate upper middle class with peopel swaning around on private jets and yachts. The so called real wealthy are maybe a few thousand people. These people and big corps pay low tax rates, hedge fund managers making millions pay 24%, a doctor earning 500K 50% or more, a small businessman is in the same boat as doctor. Yes in good years gov takes half, when times are tough gov does not put capital back in and business fails, presto no jobs no growth.
You want Jobs, implement simpdon bowels, max fed tax rate 28% no seperate cap gains arate and no loopholes, gov collects more, and small buisness get a break.
This so called 1% are people makign 250k really so wealthy especialy if they live in an urban area, is this the enbemy, or is the real problem corps making billions and not paying taxes with wall streeters making millions. Yet who is egtting taxed and paying the taxes, the very people we aspire to be, the upper middle class while the real rich get benefits, open your eyes people. Ever wonder why there are no good middle class jobs, because the buisness thta employs the middle class, the small and medium business is getting destroyed.
@Boxerman – you are talking about the 0.1% that rules the roost. A large number of the 1% you mentioned is employed by the 0.1%.
It is interesting to see someone mention the Koch brothers. They donated to both presidential campaigns (more to Repubs).