Wampum

More erosion of worker's rights.

The Bush Administration's war on Labor continues. Yesterday, the National Labor Relations Board reversed a Clinton-era decision giving temporary workers the right to join their permanent counterparts in collective bargaining.

Temps Lose Bargaining Rights Won In 2000 NLRB Reverses Stand Along Party Lines By Amy Joyce Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, November 30, 2004; Page E01

Temporary workers will no longer be able to bargain for job benefits as part of a unit with permanent employees, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled, reversing a Clinton-era precedent.

In a 3 to 2 vote that was issued Friday, the three members appointed by President Bush -- Robert J. Battista, the chairman; Peter C. Schaumber and Ronald E. Meisburg -- said there is a difference between temporary and permanent workers. "Thus, the entity that the two groups of employees look to as their employer is not the same. No amount of legal legerdemain can alter that fact," their ruling stated.

It overturned a 2000 NLRB ruling, called M.B. Sturgis, that said bargaining units that combined both temporary and permanent employees were permissible.

As the Post points out, one of the reasons this is so important is that temporary jobs have made up a significant portion of new employment under the Bush Administration:

One of the biggest sources of job gains in September was temporary jobs, which grew by 33,000. Temporary staffing firms added 48,000 jobs in October, according to the Labor Department. There are about 2.5 million temporary workers in the workforce today, and the hiring of temps has accounted for nearly half of the private jobs created since the beginning of 2002.

I did a little analysis of my own, pulling BLS data for the last 18 months (note: in May 2003, the BLS changed employment categories, so I was reluctant to pull from the earlier one, not completely comfortable they were identical.) In addition to looking at temp workers versus total employment, I thought it important to compare those numbers with job losses/gains in an area traditionally represented by labor unions, e.g., manufacturing production workers. Here are the graphed results, in total and by month:

When viewed in this context, this decision by the NLRB is particularly depressing, as the impact on a shifting worker bee population is inflated. Not only are employees being shunted from permanent to temporary status, but once their status is transformed, they lose not only the rights they held as unionized labor, but the very right to organize. That is, unless their employers or temp agencies approve.

More class warfare compliments of the Bush Administration.

Posted by MB Williams at November 30, 2004 09:29 AM | TrackBack