Top Robber Barons, 2nd Gilded Age Trying to End Workers' Freedom, Unions, NLRB: R. Reich

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Fri Mar 1, 2024, 01:24 PM - Edit history (1)

The biggest robber barons of this Second Gilded Age are trying to end workers' freedom, By Robert Reich, Alternet, Feb. 27, 2024. - Ed.

I never believed Jeff Bezos, the 2nd-richest person in America (worth est. $114 bill), and Elon Musk, the richest ( $180 bill), would brazenly use their wealth and power to try to eliminate labor unions and thereby suppress the wages of American workers even further. I assumed they wouldn’t reveal themselves as no better (and in many ways worse) than the robber barons of the 1st Gilded Age, whose riches were unrivaled and who fought with all their might against labor unions.

Bezos’s Amazon hasn't exactly hidden its objective. The company has fought off every attempt to organize its workers - holding anti-union meetings, targeting union supporters, challenging union elections, and firing workers who tried to organize. But in a legal filing last Thursday, Amazon went even further. It argued that the National Labor Relations Board, which supervises and enforces labor law, is unconstitutional because it mixes judicial and executive functions. Bezos’s view (assuming Amazon’s filing reflects his view) is the same as that of Musk, whose SpaceX made an almost identical argument in a lawsuit last month.

The NLRB is the agency that enforces the National Labor Relations Act - the 1935 Act that legitimized labor unions. Bezos & Musk’s argument was rejected by the Supreme Ct. 86 years ago in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. The NLRB found that the steel giant Jones & Laughlin had violated the National Labor Relations Act by firing workers for trying to organize a union. In an opinion by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the SC upheld the NLRB’s order, holding that Congress acted within its constitutional authority to pass the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, incl. the National Labor Relations Board to enforce it.

But Bezos and Musk want the Supreme Ct. to reverse its ruling & return America to a time before workers had the right to form unions. Both tycoons hate unions and have illegally fired workers for trying to organize them. Amazon - having had one of its warehouses vote to unionize - is actively patrolling its workplaces against any signs of unionizing activity. Musk’s Tesla is the target of organizing efforts by the UAW and a number of European unions. Evidently, it’s not enough for Bezos and Musk to amass more wealth than any 2 people on the planet. Not enough for them to monopolize their respective industries...
https://www.alternet.org/second-gilded-age/

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
--------------
PPI, Scandinavia Has the World's Higest Union - Membership Rates, 01.25.2023
Labor union membership as a share of the workforce for OECD countries:
2020 15.8%
2010 17.8%
2000 20.9%
https://www.progressivepolicy.org/blogs/ppis-trade-fact-of-the-week-scandinavia-has-the-worlds-highest-union-membership-rates/

[Attilatheblond]

1. Seems they are also closing things and doing layoffs

Thinking it's a sort of non-donation donation to those running against Biden & DEM legislative candidates. The economy has been greatly improved so the fattest cats want DEMs to lose so the fattest cats get to keep all their tax cuts and loopholes. They seem to WANT workers to struggle more, in hopes they will vote GOP and save fat cat tax breaks for them.

[appalachiablue]

2. Could be in a twisted, deceptive way. Hope workers don't buy it.

[appalachiablue]

5. FL: Tens of thousands of workers have just lost their labor unions. More coming

Tens of thousands of workers in Florida have just lost their labor unions. More coming
WLRN (Miami and South Florida), 2/15/2024

In St. Johns County, on the Atlantic shore of Northeast Florida, more than 55% of public school teachers paid their union dues this last year. Despite that, nearly 3,500 teachers are facing the threat of having their union representation revoked. At the same time, in Southwest Florida, only 16% of law enforcement officers of the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office paid union dues last year. Their union is under absolutely no threat of being decertified.

A year after Governor DeSantis signed into law a sweeping anti-union bill requiring most public sector unions to boost the rate of members paying dues or be disbanded, the full effects of the new union rules are coming into clear view — double standards and all.

Law enforcement, firefighter and correctional officer unions are exempt from the new law, no matter how few members pay union dues.
...
A labor economist warned the law could prove to be more effective in destroying labor power in Florida than the landmark Act 10 proved to be in Wisconsin, a law broadly considered as one of the strongest anti-union laws ever passed by a state government.
https://www.wlrn.org/wlrn-investigations/2024-02-15/florida-labor-union-membership-teachers-public-sb-256
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218690007

[elleng]

3. * SC upheld the NLRB's order, holding that Congress acted within its constitutional authority

to pass the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, incl. the National Labor Relations Board to enforce it.'

[appalachiablue]

4. Indeed, tx for replying. (Added NLRB link, forgot it above).

- NLRB website, About Us:

Our History: The National Labor Relations Board is proud of its history of enforcing the National Labor Relations Act. Starting in the Great Depression and continuing through World War II and the economic growth and challenges that followed, the NLRB has worked to guarantee the rights of employees to bargain collectively, if they choose to do so...
https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/who-we-are/our-history

[GiqueCee]

6. The magnitude of their greed...

... can only be measured in astronomical terms. They could do so much good with so much wealth, but they take the path of infantile selfishness instead.
So... assholes. How 'bout you take a tip from Taylor? She rakes in millions with her concerts, and she pays her people well, with fat bonuses to boot. She gives to charities, she goes out of her way to help strangers, and, well... she's just a better person than any of you will ever be.
The world is getting pretty fuckin' sick of people like you raping society for your own profit and amusement. You are all rotten down to your DNA, and it will be the end of you, and that end will come much sooner than you think. Your wet dream of a new feudalism will never happen.
A sociopolitical "philosophy" rooted in the malicious phrase, "Nice guys finish last", is doomed to failure and, ultimately, to its own self-destruction.
The decent people of the world are sick of waiting for self-destruction. You've been warned.