In today’s installment for her Melville House Live Book Project, reporter Kari Lydersen looks into union charges filed against the ownership of Republic Windows & Doors ….

Chicago, January 12, 2009 — On January 6 the UE filed charges of unfair labor practices against Republic Windows. This is something unions do every day…what does it actually mean?

The National Labor Relations Act (NRLA) of 1935 created the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) which is responsible for ensuring workers’ rights are upheld to “protected concerted activities” and “collective bargaining,” — essentially organizing for their rights. It also gives employers rights, including that labor unions may not limit their productivity or insist more workers be hired. And it gives workers the right to oust the union representing them. (The NLRB’s website describes the NLRA as: “the primary law governing relations between unions and employers in the private sector. The statute guarantees the right of employees to organize and to bargain collectively with their employers, and to engage in other protected concerted activity with or without a union, or to refrain from all such activity.”)

However workers classified as having supervisory or managerial duties are not covered by the NLRA, hence a popular union-busting tactic is to declare as many workers as possible “supervisors.”

When workers believe their collective bargaining rights have been violated, through a retaliatory firing, intimidation during a unionizing campaign or any number of other activities, they file a charge with the NLRB. The NLRB then decides whether to act on that charge and file a complaint against the company. If the board does so, it goes into arbitration within the Department of Labor which could result in injunctive relief – forcing the company to stop, change or make amends for their actions, fines or other measures.

The UE’s charge basically states that Republic Windows “failed and refused to bargain in good faith” by shutting down, transferring and subcontracting operations elsewhere without notifying or negotiating with the union about these moves or their effects; and by “creating an alter-ego entity in order to avoid its collective bargaining obligations” – ie, trying to escape from the union. It also mentions complaints preceding and likely related to the shutdown: the failure to process grievances in a timely manner and the failure to respond to information requests from the union.

The union asks for injunctive relief, which likely means return of equipment to the facility and other measures. The complaint names Republic Windows and Doors, “a/k/a d/b/a Echo Windows and Doors,” the Iowa company which Republic Windows owner Richard Gillman’s family incorporated shortly before the shutdown.

As with any bureaucratic agency, charges can sometimes take many months to wind their way through the NLRB to a final decision. The five-member board is appointed by the president, and usually rules unanimously but sometimes breaks down along party lines. The NLRB under President Bush was widely known as “easily the most anti-worker labor board in history” having “lost few opportunities to turn back the clock on workers’ rights,” in the words of CommonDreams.org. (Read more here.) President Elect Barack Obama will appoint three new members of the NLRB; employers are afraid they will be much more pro-union than under Bush, as you’ll see in this statement from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Fund, an anti-union group.

The landscape of NLRA enforcement and unionizing efforts would be greatly altered if the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which Obama has championed, passes. The act would let a union to bypass the NLRB’s current secret ballot election process, and instead a union would have to be recognized if the NLRB verifies that a majority of employees have signed union authorization cards. This would be a major change since employers couldn’t pressure or coerce employees leading up to the balloting. Here a Chicago lawyer gives more insight into EFCA and other upcoming labor-related legislation.

Stay tuned to see what happens with the UE’s NLRB charge and the shape of the agency as a whole.

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