Without the board, employees would not be allowed to exercise their right to negotiate together without actually losing their job, which I'd say is fairly unconstitutional.
"I put a dog in a corner, why did it viciously attack me!?"
I personally live way too comfortably to justify to myself the possibility of being arrested, hurt or even killed for anything I believe in. I hate myself for that, but the logical part of my brain simply won't let me do it. Even when I was making much less, I still had this same mentality.
For better or worse, the line that must be crossed for millions to actually get together and do something about it is much, much lower in this day and age.
If there's one thing that is clear to me, is that when many of the rights we have today, that were fought and conquered with blood, people had much worse conditions of living. People were already in terrible situations, so taking personal risk in order to fight for something better was not so far fetched.
Another aspect is that we now live much more individualized lives. We no longer have the communities we had before, nor the similar shared communities. Only individuals that actively seek like-minded people and causes to fight for, end up together. The vast majority lives in their own bubble.
P.S: dang, if you read this, can you tell me if I can even comment on anything with any "ideological" overlap anymore. I don't wanna break any site rules but it's really hard for me to know where you draw the line for this stuff. I just enjoy discussing these matters and I'm not trying to create flame wars or anything like that.
And yet some people are still surprised by the political climate in America that is being created as a result. I keep saying that someone (I don't care who) needs to do something about housing, healthcare, and wages before there's even bigger trouble.
Dumb move by Amazon. First time after hearing criticism of them for over 20 years that I actually felt like I was wrong about them.
They even have internal reports that they are going to exhaust the labor pool due to their hiring and firing practices at warehouses within a few years.
The latest news from the Amazon delivery side? They are looking to reduce the minimum hiring age from 21 to 18. That just screams trying to scrape the barrel of the nearly exhausted labor pool and they don't give a single fuck why they are in the predictament they are facing.
The mood is that Boomers are only going to be "in charge" for so long, and when that tape runs out, things stop being so predictable. I bet they'll ratchet up as much of these alienating policies as possible just to ensure the overton window buffers out progressive action before they don't have the means to anymore.
A cheap but effective tactic for them to take.
This is a strangely heated way of describing it.
There is a concerning percentage of US citizens that actively wants this.
"He will run America like one of his business"
There’s no free speech board.
Genuinely curious, what part of the Constitution protects their right to negotiate?
> Section 7: Employees have the right to self-organize, form, join, or assist labor unions, bargain collectively with employers through representatives of their own choosing, and engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining.
> Section 8(a)(1): Employers cannot interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights under Section 7.
Shortly after that, it was challenged [1]. In short, The Supreme Court upheld the act in a 5-4 decision, acknowledging Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce, even indirectly through labor regulations. This was not the only case. The supreme court weighted on many aspects of the act [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Ste...
[2] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/unions-have...
The first link did not work. I think the correct one is:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Ste....
I've seen arguments about it being impossible for the state to restrict union activities under the 1st amendment because of freedom of association, and trying to shoehorn it into the 14th under a due process theory (can't deprive liberty without process). These are both restrictions on state activity, i.e. saying that the state can't outlaw unions, rather than saying that a private sector company couldn't just immediately fire anyone who joins a union.
> ...the statute goes no further than to safeguard the right of employees to self-organization and to select representatives of their own choosing for collective bargaining or other mutual protection without restraint or coercion by their employer.
> That is a fundamental right. Employees have as clear a right to organize and select their representatives for lawful purposes as the respondent has to organize its business and select its own officers and agents. Discrimination and coercion to prevent the free exercise of the right of employees to self-organization and representation is a proper subject for condemnation by competent legislative authority.
It's the mechanism of enforcement that seems to be in question here, but IANAL.
If nothing else, the NLRB forces people who otherwise like their job to join a union they may not like, which seems equally unconstitutional.
To paraphrase a common argument about why we don't need unions, if you don't like the union, why not just find another job?
> The point of a union is…
Those comments are unrelated. You can like an idea but that doesn’t mean it’s constitutional, which is why amendments exist. Conversely, you can very much dislike an idea that may be in the Constitution.
“Good idea” and “legal” are distinct categories.
But a more direct criticism of the legal aspect would be: getting a job is voluntary from a legal perspective, how does that make joining the associated union a compelled action? The union is part of the job.
Besides, union security agreements already _are_ heavily regulated in the US.
Not really. Sure you in theory vote for union leaders, but in practice it ends up being just as bad as any other politics and so you don't really have any more ability to change things.
> The union can't fire you like the company can.
What is the difference between being fired and being told we don't have any work for you? Labors often do lose their job - they may still be in the union and thus early in line if there is another job, but they don't have control of when jobs come up.
This is not at all universally true? A union can be dysfunctional just like any other collaboration between people—that's hardly a reason to not even try.
Specifically, I joined the Glitch union along with my coworkers in 2020, and we were pretty united on what we wanted to negotiate for. The union more than paid for the effort we put in to forming it and our dues when it won severance and health coverage for those hit by layoffs later.
> What is the difference between being fired and being told we don't have any work for you? Labors often do lose their job - they may still be in the union and thus early in line if there is another job, but they don't have control of when jobs come up.
What does this have to do with a union improving the power balance in negotiations between employees and a company? If you're suggesting that even with a union companies can find ways to get rid of you, well, that's one of the very things unions can fight against with the help of the labor board being threatened in the article above.
Enjoy your corporate overlord fiefdoms
Rights are granted by the legal observation of said right. If your right boils down to words without observability, it’s not a right.
Folks getting hung up on “well that’s a right and this other thing can’t be because technically…” are definitely missing the last 200ish years of thought in that area, though. As are the ones who think rights are actually better-protected than other freedoms (aside from the PR boost of the name! And maybe “popular” rights are better-enshrined in law, but that’s not inherent in their being a right—we could so-protect anything)
There’s no set list that’s definitely correct and they also don’t “exist” in any meaningful sense if they can’t be exercised (any more than Tinkerbell exists). It’s just a nice label. Which isn’t nothing! But they’re not “real” in the sense some people suppose they are, even philosophically.
I think a lot of this confusion stems from focus in US schools on the political philosophy state-of-the-art c. 1776 as an underpinning of a kind of US Civil Religion. Most of that stuff’s kinda crap. Go read the famously influential Second Treatise, it’s actually a pretty easy read and not that long. It’s plainly (to a modern reader) not strong.
Having been wrong about some things doesn’t make someone stupid. Plato got some stuff wrong. Doesn’t make him dumb.
I think we could get very analytical about some rights of course. The right to not incriminate yourself is a subtle one. But it relies on an argument about a number of biological and practical realities.
Not everything has a parallel so direct as pointing to what animals do. But as social structures are evolved rather than simply imagined, there may be naturalistic arguments to be had in favor of rights that facilitate everyone getting along.
Anyway, that's the overview of how I'd approach it all. It's probably been done by someone. If you happen to know, I'd appreciate the reference.
This is the kind of trouble one gets into with these analogies-from-nature, or with the kind of fictional humanity-in-the-state-of-nature stories that used to be in vogue for “proving” which things are or are not natural rights: they’re usually superfluous, because we’re just using motivated reasoning to reach the same conclusions we would have if asked to list what we think ought to be rights without that foundation. Instead of discussing which outcomes are likely and preferred by protecting some set of rights, we waste time deciding which set of from-nature analogies or tales are valid (if we go down this road and find that holding slaves is a right—what then? But we won’t, because the whole thing is just motivated reasoning anyway, so we’ll pick some different set of stories to ensure we don’t end up there—repeat for everything else)