Cohen: Vote to Protect Your
Rights, Advance Labor

September 15, 2006

An anti-labor Labor Department, a National Labor Relations Board lined up against workers and six years of a hostile presidential administration have placed workers’ rights in severe jeopardy, said IBEW General Counsel Larry Cohen in a sobering address.

In the courts and regulatory sphere, the anti-union bent of the governing Republicans has the capacity to do long-term damage to the rights of workers, Cohen said.

“The bottom line is that George Bush’s use of the appointment process, in the federal government and the courts, has put the legal rights of American workers under siege,” Cohen said. 

In his almost six years in office, President Bush has appointed 255 judges to the federal courts, and he has two years to appoint more.  It is possible, Cohen said, that when Bush leaves office, he will have appointed almost half of the sitting federal judges.

“As we all know, he recently put two new justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, and we are unlikely to get their votes in labor cases that come before the high court,” Cohen said.  

The NLRB is stacked with Republican appointees, issuing major decisions that expand employers’ rights at the expense of workers’ rights.  The National Labor Relations Act --  passed to enable workers to organize and bargain collectively -- has become a hindrance.  The Department of Labor has altered the rules to impose huge new reporting burdens on unions.  And the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has shifted focus from enforcement to “consultation” with employers, with increased injury and fatality rates in the mining industry a direct and alarming result.

But anyone concerned about this unrelenting assault on rights of workers has a powerful weapon to fight back: the vote.  “I implore you to do whatever you must at the local level to make sure that your members are registered and they vote,” Cohen said.  “It is vitally important to convince them to cast their votes based on the economic issues that directly affect their rights as workers and union members -- and not on some of the emotional social issues that have no impact on their daily lives but which are so skillfully and cynically used against the labor movement by the Republican Party.”