Right, and you can sue, but it's time-consuming and uncertain. Byw you are likely to get fired if you try to organize a union -- last I heard, your chances were about 50%, probably higher. Union busters admit that they advise compnaies to violate the LMRDA (the basic labor law, aka the NLRA, but with other stuff added) as a matter of policy because the NLTB has no teeth (no punitive damages powers, unlike with the Civil Rights Acts and anti-discrimination laws), just the power to order reinstatement (five years later after the Court of Appeals gets through with it), back pay, and cease-amd-desist orders. So violation of the labor laws is part of the cost of doing biz for a lot of businesses.
My unscientific observation is that comonaies hate to be cited for serious OSHA violation with trivial penalties, but don't care about the labor laws. Any theories why?
Btw, within their limitations and especially since GHW Bush's 1991 CRA Amendment made jury trials and punitive damages available, a half-meritorious employment discrimination lawsuit will scare the boss, even though he wins 80% of the time.
jks
--- Nathan Newman <nathanne at nathannewman.org> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
>
>
> >In private non-union workplaces, the rules would be
> changed.
>
> -Not all of the rules can be changed by employers'
> whim alone, as some
> -of them are federal and state laws. There are
> myriad government
> -regulations concerning occupational health and
> safety
> -<http://www.osha.gov/index.html>, wages and hours
> -<http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/>, environment
> -<http://www.epa.gov/epahome/workplac.htm>, and
> other subjects, whose
> -enforcement workers must take into their own
> collective hands.
>
> And when workers insist on the rules being followed,
> even basic ones like
> overtime and minimum wage laws, they get fired quite
> often. The reality is
> that even government regulations only get enforced
> when workers are already
> collectively organized. In large numbers of
> industries, like restaurants
> as one I'm familiar with, a MAJORITY of workplaces
> regularly ignore overtime
> and other basic laws.
>
> If you protest, you no longer have a job.
>
> Unless unions actively support worker organizing,
> they can't usually win on
> their own, so looking to the "unorganized
> workplaces" as the source of
> worker upheaval is just a fantasy.
>
> Nathan Newman
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Make Yahoo! your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs