In an editorial today it whines about the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and how it has “Tilted so heavily toward union interests that companies might be forgiven for thinking the process is rigged against them.”
One might wonder what the WSJ would be saying if this were actually the case and workers weren’t being laid off, our wages cut, and companies shifting from unionized locale’s to right to work states or countries where humans come really cheap and Union free. If this is as Union biased as any NLRB gets, we are in deep trouble.
But for the capitalist class there is a real issue here and that is control over capital allocation and business decisions. In a capitalist economy, the right of the capitalist to own capital and allocate it as they wish is a fundamental god given right, that’s why they’re called capitalists. It is the ultimate freedom.
What’s at stake for them here is an NLRB intrusion on their right to make business decisions and allocate capital without any interference or consultation with workers organizations. “In America,” the Journal opines, “business decisions are made by owners or executives and are rarely subject to compulsory bargaining while unions confine their concerns to working conditions, pay and benefits.”
Whether there are any working conditions, or pay and benefits to bargain over is a business decision of no concern to Unions. The right to move and allocate capital is an inalienable right of the capitalist and cannot be challenged.
The recent decision by the NLRB claiming that Boeing is re-locating to a right to work state from Washington in “retaliation” against Union represented employees (see earlier blog) has the capitalist class up in arms. This shows how sacred this right is to them. The state can intervene in strikes with injunctions or force workers back to work at the point of a gun. It can engage in endless wars without a vote of the population and hand over trillions of public money to bankers and speculators, but cannot impinge on the rights of capitalists to shut down a plant and destroy a community or do whatever they please with capital.
The NLRB has not stopped or driven back the capitalist offensive against workers in any serious way but even mild intrusions on their rights riles the bourgeois. In a case similar to the Boeing decision the NLRB sided with a Las Vegas company that refused to explain to its union why it shut down and moved to Florida. In a conclusion written in that case NLRB chairwoman Wilma Liebman is suggesting that the NLRB’s task of “promoting collective bargaining” would be much easier if “employers would be required to provide unions with requested information about relocation decisions whenever there was a reasonable likelihood that labor-cost concessions might affect the decisions.”
Gasp! Communists on the NLRB.
There is no fear that Ms. Liebman expects the NLRB to actually challenge the right of capitalists to do what they please with their capital or shut down businesses and move them whenever they find more profitable locales, countries or states that give tax breaks, are right to work areas or have a supply of cheaper Labor power. The Journal admits as much when it says “Ms Liebman wants to force more companies to consult unions when they want to relocate, because unions might theoretically be able to offer concessions to avert a move if they had more information.”
There is not a Union official or former Union lawyer and NLRB official like MS Lieberman that would dream of denying the right of capitalists to own the business. President Obama’s most liberal appointee would not suggest such a thing.
But the capitalist class, its theoreticians and political representatives in its two parties fight ferociously to defend the slightest encroachment on its rights. And they are correct here, for where might this lead? It opens a door that needs to be closed. If the Labor hierarchy were as aggressive in defending workers' rights never mind fighting to expand them, we would be in much better shape.
“…such a rule change would be an unprecedented intrusion in to boardrooms” the Journal adds, as “..unions might use collective bargaining to request reams of data such as payroll and tax returns to increase their negotiating leverage.”
This is a possibility but behind it all is a general fear that a sacred right is being threatened. And while the present bureaucracy that sits atop organized Labor and its allies like the liberals on the NLRB are willing partners in the elimination of rights, wages and benefits that workers have won over a century or more, the strategists of capital recognize the potential power of the working class both in and outside Unions and they fear it.
The strategists of capital are not fools. They are far more aware of US Labor and working class history than most top Union officials. They see how seemingly entrenched leaders and regimes can fall like rotten apples from a tree in the face of a strong wind once the working class lifts its head in struggle. Even if Ms Liebman’s intentions are to assist “concessionary” collective bargaining, objective conditions can change very rapidly, especially in such volatile times.
This issue is a “frontal assault” on right to work states says the Journal. It describes right to work states as states which “let individual workers choose whether to join a union.”. Naturally, such a decision is made free of coercion and any sort of pressure from the bosses we are supposed to believe. Any idiot knows we have no power as individuals against a class that holds state power.
In a threatening but cloaked attempt to appear concerned about workers the Journal warns that if it succeeds such an “unprecedented attack" on the “free movement of business and capital in America.” will mean “a flight of jobs overseas, not more at home.”
As workers, the most important conclusion we can draw from the honest and clear appraisal of events by an important mouthpiece of capital is that the ownership of capital and its allocation is a right we must take from them. Capital is not their creation, it is ours, it has its source in labor and Labor alone. It is a revolutionary act undoubtedly, and a denial of a certain freedom for a small but rich and powerful section of the population, but no rights are permanent and some rights need to be denied.
Freedom for the capitalist is the freedom to exploit Labor and accumulate the wealth that is the product of this exploitation. Freedom for us means denying them the right to this process and the fruits thereof.
Through this there are rights that we guarantee them; the right to a job and a secure and productive life----a right they presently deny the rest of us.
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