Campaign for Trade Union Freedom

The Campaign For Trade Union Freedom was established in 2013 following a merger of the Liaison Committee For The Defence Of Trade Unions and the United Campaign To Repeal The Anti Trade Union Laws. The CTUF is a campaigning organisation fighting to defend and enhance trade unionism, oppose all anti-union laws as well as promoting and defending collective bargaining across UK, Europe and the World.

Amazon, Trader Joe’s and SpaceX line up for anti-union attack In USA

Posted on By Tony Burke

Three companies are seeking the removal of workers’ rights by arguing that the US National Labour Relations Board is unconstitutional.

Amazon, US grocery chain Trader Joe’s and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, a defence, space craft and satellite manufacturing company — three companies with records of anti-union activity and which face accusations of labour law violations — are attempting to have the entire US system by which workers can seek to secure union rights ruled unconstitutional.

The National Labour Relations Board (NLRB), while cumbersome and subject to abuse by anti-union employers, was set up by the 1935 Wagner Act. This was amended in 1947 through the Taft-Hartley Act (which weakened the law) and in 1959 through the Landrum-Griffin Act.

The main functions of the NLRB are to decide, when petitioned by employees, if an appropriate bargaining unit of employees exists for collective bargaining; to determine by secret-ballot elections (conducted by the NLRB) whether the employees in a business or industry wish to be represented by labour unions; and to prevent or correct unfair labour practices by employers and unions. The US president appoints the five board members and the board’s general counsel.

In an effort to block successful union organising campaigns at its fulfilment sites in the US, Amazon claims that the NLRB’s structure is unconstitutional because administrative law judges are “insulated from presidential oversight,” thus violating the separation of powers.

The company also argues against the structure of NLRB itself, as well as its ability to fine a company for unfair labour practices after a hearing, rather than a full jury trial.

Like other federal agencies, the NLRB is shaped by the US president. Under Joe Biden, the NLRB has been more pro-worker.

But with the prospect of a Trump administration, US unions now see the attacks on the NLRB as a real threat as they gear up for major organising campaigns, notably in the auto sector.

SpaceX sued the NLRB in early January this year, arguing that the structure of the agency is unconstitutional. The lawsuit came a day after the NLRB accused the company of unlawfully firing employees who wrote an open letter critical of Musk and of creating the impression workers were under surveillance.

At a January labour board hearing over allegations that Trader Joe’s retaliated against union activism, a lawyer for the grocery chain said the NLRB and its panel of administrative law judges were structured unconstitutionally.

However Seth Goldstein, the legal counsel for Trader Joe’s United and the Amazon Labor Union (US unions sometimes organise via company or site-wide independent unions) said the claim that the NLRB was unconstitutional was “a crock of shit. I don’t believe any of it, and I think it’s just a cover to bust unions.”

In Britain Amazon is the focus of a major organising campaign by GMB in Coventry and Birmingham.

Musk is currently in the midst of long battle with the Swedish union IF Metall over legal rights to collective bargaining and union recognition at his Tesla e-vehicles maintenance sites, and he also faces problems with IG Metall in Germany over union recognition at Tesla’s manufacturing site in Brandenburg.

 

 

Unions, lawyers and rights groups slam ministers’ decision to reintroduce tribunal fees

Posted on By CTUF

By Peter Lazenby, Morning Star, February 26th

Unions, lawyers and rights groups have condemned a renewed government attack on workers’ rights through the reintroduction of employment tribunal fees.

Workers will have to pay to make claims such as unfair dismissal and discrimination at the hands of unscrupulous employers.

Nearly 50 organisations including the TUC, Citizens Advice, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Fawcett Society, Maternity Action, Women’s Budget Group and Liberty have called on the government to think again.

The groups opposing the fees said in a joint statement: “Workers seeking recovery of wage theft, unpaid redundancy pay and compensation for unfair dismissal are to be asked to stump up extra money at an incredibly tough moment in their lives.

“Access to justice must never be contingent on your ability to pay.”

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “All working people should be able to enforce their rights.

“But introducing fees for tribunals puts yet another hurdle in the way of those seeking justice at their most vulnerable moment.”

It is the government’s second attempt to force workers to pay for justice.

In 2017 public-sector union Unison challenged the introduction of fees, winning a Supreme Court ruling that imposing a fee “effectively prevents access to justice and is therefore unlawful.”

Paul Nowak said: “The Conservatives have already tried this and failed.

“Last time they introduced tribunal fees, claims dropped by two-thirds. And the Supreme Court threw fees out — saying they interfered with access to justice.

“That should have been the nail in the coffin for these cynical plans, but ministers have decided to side with bad bosses over workers and resurrect employment tribunal fees.”

The fees will particularly affect women sacked or victimised at work for becoming pregnant.

Rosalind Bragg, Maternity Action Group director, said: “For pregnant women and new mothers in the cost-of-living crisis, every penny counts.

“We have laws in place to secure equal treatment of pregnant women and new mothers at work but these are ineffective without the robust operation of the employment tribunal.

“Fees are a step backwards in the fight for gender equality.”

Industrial tribunals — later renamed employment tribunals — were introduced by former prime minister Harold Wilson’s Labour government in 1964.