quote:

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In a decision condemned by unions but praised by business, the National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling yesterday that will exempt registered nurses — and many other workers — from union membership if they have certain kinds of supervisory duties.

Some labor experts predicted that the ruling could affect more than eight million workers who might also be deemed supervisors, including teachers who oversee aides. The board’s 3-to-2 decision involved nurses overseeing shifts at a Michigan hospital.

. . . .

In the majority decision, the three Republicans on the board adopted a broad definition of supervisor, saying it included workers who assigned others to a location, shift or significant tasks, like a nurse overseeing a shift who might assign another nurse to a particular patient.

The majority ruled that workers should generally be deemed supervisors, exempt from union membership, if they oversaw another employee and could be held accountable if that subordinate performed poorly. The majority also ruled that workers could be deemed supervisors if they were assigned supervisory duties just 10 percent to 15 percent of their total work time.

In a stinging dissent, the two Democrats on the board, Wilma B. Liebman and Dennis P. Walsh, wrote, “Today’s decision threatens to create a new class of workers under federal labor law: workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees.”

. . . .

Yesterday’s decision could exclude many retail workers, like department heads in supermarkets or discount stores, from joining unions. The majority wrote, “The assignment of an employee to a certain department (e.g., housewares) or to a certain shift (e.g., night) or to certain significant overall tasks (e.g., restocking shelves) would generally qualify” as having the supervisory responsibility of assigning.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/washington/04labor.html

[ 04 October 2006: Message edited by: josh ]

And yet there are many people, even on babble, that brazenly assert that there is no such thing as class war and social classes are a thing of the past. If there is no class war, why is the other side still shooting? Why are workers losing protection and rights? Why this social backwardness?

Supplemental: Maybe the US regime wants to classify nurses the same way they've classified their victims in Guantanamo, who are neither "prisoners of war" nor "civilians" who must be protected; nurses would be like "enemy combatants" in a legal limbo, neither this nor that, unprotected by labour law and so on. Bertold Brecht would have had a field day with these "rules" and "exceptions".

[ 04 October 2006: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]