By Dave Lindorff

The Democrats in Congress have sold out their supporters in the
labor movement by giving up the so-called “card-check” feature of the
embattled Employee Free Choice Act, which makes the “reform”
legislation that has been billed as labor’s “number one issue” much
less of a reform. Instead of being hammered into line on this issue by
party leaders and by President Obama, who has long pledged to back
EFCA, conservative Democrats in the House and Senate were allowed to
join Republicans in opposing the measure, leading to its replacement
with a vague plan to require quicker secret-ballot elections in
union-organizing drives.

But largely unnoticed by the corporate media, there has been some
really important good news for working people and the labor movement:
the appointment of three people to fill the long-vacant empty seats on
the five-member National Labor Relations Board, which has the ultimate
job of adjudicating issues under the National Labor Relations Act.

The Bush administration had basically gutted the NLRA by simply
failing, since 2007, to fill the three seats that had been emptied as
prior board members’ five-year terms had expired. This had left the
NLRB with only two members, one a Democratic, pro-labor appointee, and
one a Republican pro-management appointee. Since these two members
would vote on opposite sides of most issues, the only issues they ended
up issuing decisions on were 400 particularly egregious cases, where
they could both agree—and most of those are still in legal limbo since
they have been challenged in court on the basis that board rules
require a three-member quorum.

The Obama administration, in April, announced three new
appointments to fill the vacant seats...

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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest
book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work
is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net