Top Robber Barons, 2nd Gilded Age Trying to End Workers' Freedom, Unions, NLRB: R. Reich

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Last edited Fri Mar 1, 2024, 01:24 PM - Edit history (1)

The biggest robber barons of this Second Gilded Age are trying to end workers' freedom, By Robert Reich, Alternet, Feb. 27, 2024. - Ed.

I never believed Jeff Bezos, the 2nd-richest person in America (worth est. $114 bill), and Elon Musk, the richest ( $180 bill), would brazenly use their wealth and power to try to eliminate labor unions and thereby suppress the wages of American workers even further. I assumed they wouldn’t reveal themselves as no better (and in many ways worse) than the robber barons of the 1st Gilded Age, whose riches were unrivaled and who fought with all their might against labor unions.

Bezos’s Amazon hasn't exactly hidden its objective. The company has fought off every attempt to organize its workers - holding anti-union meetings, targeting union supporters, challenging union elections, and firing workers who tried to organize. But in a legal filing last Thursday, Amazon went even further. It argued that the National Labor Relations Board, which supervises and enforces labor law, is unconstitutional because it mixes judicial and executive functions. Bezos’s view (assuming Amazon’s filing reflects his view) is the same as that of Musk, whose SpaceX made an almost identical argument in a lawsuit last month.

The NLRB is the agency that enforces the National Labor Relations Act - the 1935 Act that legitimized labor unions. Bezos & Musk’s argument was rejected by the Supreme Ct. 86 years ago in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. The NLRB found that the steel giant Jones & Laughlin had violated the National Labor Relations Act by firing workers for trying to organize a union. In an opinion by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the SC upheld the NLRB’s order, holding that Congress acted within its constitutional authority to pass the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, incl. the National Labor Relations Board to enforce it.

But Bezos and Musk want the Supreme Ct. to reverse its ruling & return America to a time before workers had the right to form unions. Both tycoons hate unions and have illegally fired workers for trying to organize them. Amazon - having had one of its warehouses vote to unionize - is actively patrolling its workplaces against any signs of unionizing activity. Musk’s Tesla is the target of organizing efforts by the UAW and a number of European unions. Evidently, it’s not enough for Bezos and Musk to amass more wealth than any 2 people on the planet. Not enough for them to monopolize their respective industries...
https://www.alternet.org/second-gilded-age/

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
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PPI, Scandinavia Has the World's Higest Union - Membership Rates, 01.25.2023
Labor union membership as a share of the workforce for OECD countries:
2020 15.8%
2010 17.8%
2000 20.9%
https://www.progressivepolicy.org/blogs/ppis-trade-fact-of-the-week-scandinavia-has-the-worlds-highest-union-membership-rates/