LABOR DAY 2006 - Labor Arts
Looming over this year’s Labor Day celebration like an ominous cloud is the soon-to-be-issued. decision of the Bush-majority National Labor Relations Board in the critically important Kentucky River cases. Its outcome may very well result in classifying hundreds of thousands of American workers as “supervisors,” thereby denying them the right of union representation. Nurses are the subject of these cases, but the decision could also affect large numbers of workers in the building trades, technological occupations, and elsewhere.
Labor Arts is using the occasion of this year’s Labor Day observance as a means of acquainting the site’s visitors with the critical issues involved in this forthcoming decision. Some may view this as a strange way to “celebrate” Labor Day, but unless the issue is decided in a manner that protects workers’ rights to union representation and benefits, there will be precious little for labor to celebrate in the year ahead.