How Conservatives Are Plotting to Gut Americans’ Labor Rights
Screenshot from the film Norma Rae (1979)
Kumho Tire herded workers into anti-union brainwashing sessions, fired union supporters, including a mother of seven who was eight months pregnant, and plastered the plant with anti-labor literature during the workers’ drive to join the United Steelworkers (USW).
“They even had caps that said, ‘Vote No,’” recalled Christopher Burks, who helped to lead the union organizing effort. “The managers wore them, and they tried to hand them out to the hourly workers.”
Kumho broke so many laws during the desperate scorched-earth campaign at its Macon, Georgia plant that an administrative law judge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) took the extraordinary step of ordering the company to call workers together and read a statement admitting its egregious wrongdoing.
The workers ultimately stood up to Kumho, stayed the course, and joined the union. But without the NLRB to hold the company to account, “we wouldn’t have won,” said Burks, who now serves his co-workers as president of USW Local 09-008.
Future victories like that are in jeopardy right now as right-wing extremists plot to regain control of the White House, gut Americans’ labor rights, and subjugate workers to greedy corporations.
These fanatics coined a catchphrase for their attack on working families: Project 2025.
They’re scheming to replace Joe Biden, the most pro-worker president in history, with a Republican eager to neuter the NLRB, cripple similar agencies, and roll back the gains workers continue makingin Biden’s booming post-pandemic economy.
Biden not only empowered the NLRB and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to better serve workers but also created a White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment to give more Americans a pathway to the middle class.
But right-wingers view labor rights and safety regulations as so many impediments to corporate profits and control. So the cabal behind Project 2025 contrived a solution.
They propose making it harder to form unions, such as by rescinding the Biden administration’s NLRB ruling empowering gig workers to organize. They want to make it more difficult for workers to exercise their rights, such as by narrowing the definition of protected concerted activity, the touchstone of union activism.
They want to supplant unions and dilute worker power with “employee involvement organizations” that do little but management’s bidding.
“You know how companies are,” said Burks, noting the harassment and recriminations he and his colleagues faced just to gain a voice at Kumho. “They are generally out to get people. They aren’t going to do the right thing.”
“They’re going to pick and choose who they do for and who they don’t want to do for,” he added. “There’s not equality across the board.”
While conservatives consider labor rights a burdensome check on the boss, the very opposite is true. Because they lift up all workers, unions boost morale, stability, and productivity in the workplace.
“We still have some hurdles to cross over to make it even better, but it’s way better now than it was before,” Burks said of the workers at Kumho, who ratified their first contract in August 2023.
“At least people know now that they’ll be fairly treated,” he explained. “They know when they’re going to get their raises. They know they have seniority and if a job opportunity comes up, they can bid for that job.”
Workers and unions fought for years for many of the rights and protections they have today. But if the planners of Project 2025 have their way, some of those essentials, such as overtime and safety rules, would become “negotiable defaults rather than non-negotiable floors”—forcing workers to re-fight battles all over again.
“That doesn’t make much sense,” said Kyle Downour, unit chair for USW Local 1-346, who lost two co-workers in an explosion and fire at the BP-Husky refinery in Oregon, Ohio.
In the aftermath of that tragedy, Downour called on a health, safety, and environment expert from the union’s International Headquarters to accompany him during an OSHA inspection of the facility.
The assistance proved so valuable that Downour lent his support for the “walkaround rule,” OSHA’s new policy enabling workers across the country to select representatives of their choice to take part in OSHA inspections.
While the pro-corporate authors of Project 2025 might chafe at these kinds of protections, Downour said he and other workers consider them indispensable and non-negotiable.
“It was pretty much essential to making sure we had everything covered. It’s just the transparency,” he said, noting the union representative helped to ensure a thorough investigation that held the company accountable.
As if decimating workers’ rights and protections weren’t enough, the authors of Project 2025 also aspire to fan the flames of hate and open the door to discrimination.
Those are the shameful motives behind their demand to “rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.” It’s a clarion call to steal back decades of hard-fought gains by the LGBTQ+ community.
“I have huge concerns about it. They attacked Roe v. Wade, and I know we are next. I’ve been with my partner, my wife, for 29 years, and they want to take away my marriage, my benefits, and the benefits for her that I worked for,” said Isabell Sundin, a member of the USW’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Committee and a trustee for Chapter 31-5 of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR).
“We would go backward instead of forward.”
This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.
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