NLRB was an essential part of the destruction of the working class movements that preceded it. If unions are no longer regulated by the US government, they can exert more pressure in more effective ways.
Or they will just cease to exist. They will be deemed illegal and everything will become a wildcat strike. This take feels like accelerationist but for labor unions
Okay so the neoliberal union machine run by the US government that represents 10% of workers will be disbanded, and then workers will have to break the law to get what they want? This is bad because we respect the law and think that unions should be yoked by the US government? This is bad because the workers with the largest concessions afforded by the US government will lose those concessions and no longer have an economic incentive to maintain the status quo? Do we not like wildcat strikes? What is your critique here?
Things are accelerating, contradictions are sharpening, the economy is crumbling and fascism is on the rise. Are we not allowed to have an honest analysis of the situation? Is that accelerationism? The treat factory is ending, inshallah, and the treat addled mind along with it. When people awaken from this haze and realize they are gonna have to break the law to survive, maybe they will actually join with the rest of us who have been living this way the whole time. Maybe instead of wishing to protect the institutional systems designed to destroy the labor movement, we should celebrate their downfall and the downfall of all of the institutions that keep the neoliberal fantasy alive. We are entering the best period for revolutionary organizing since the 60's and, as always, it is because the conditions have gotten bad enough that people will do something that would have been previously too uncomfortable. I did not organize for this to happen, nothing I did or thought accelerated this situation into being, but this has obviously been where we are going for a long time and now we are here.
Rooting on the failure of the NLRB in hopes that it creates the contradictions needed for an uprising of the labor movement is naive. As we currently see in the labor movement when the ruling class threatens workers ability to eat and have a shelter they cave and I don't think this is simply because institutional powers tell them to. I think there's plenty of critique for these institutions, but what organizational power do leftists have in the labor movement to move people once there is no NLRB or its power removed so much it becomes meaningless?
Again, the NLRB affects 10% of workers, it is already meaningless to the most marginalized and oppressed workers; to nearly every worker. The union itself should be the organizational power, but the NLRB means they the power rests in a government body instead of the workers themself. What power did workers have before the NLRB? Considering it was their power that forced the government to create the NLRB in response, obviously it was a lot. The idea that anyone is rooting for this in hopes of it helping is naive and misguided, the point is that it is happening anyway and contradictions are getting sharper for many reasons, this being one of them. That is happening and we need to incorporate that into our analysis and be prepared to organize with that reality in mind
The power does exist within the workers. The NLRB if it were to truly be pro labor would be a full extension arm of labor. I find no contradiction in having a federal labor bureaucratic agency that protects the rights of labor. The fact that agency could be used to destroy labor unions should be fought and a fight leftist should show up to.
Yes and the senate and house and presidency, if only the were truly pro worker, would be great for labor. It's almost if we live in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the state is a tool of the ruling class to oppress the working class or something
Unions and all the money and infrastructure don’t “cease to exist,” if nlrb goes away. Everything becoming a wildcat strike was how it was when American labor power was greatest
IMO you're wrong to assume that forcing all labor actions to be illegal will unshackle a very powerful labor movement in the US. Surveillance is a hundred times what it was in the apogee of the labor movement. The thing that made the labor movement strong at that time was the material conditions of the time: America was rapidly industrializing and conditions were very poor for workers. Now, while conditions are obviously far from good, the neoliberals seem to have found a compromise for labor aristocracy to get enough shallow pleasures on borrowed money that US labor is nowhere near as radical as before, and offshoring industry has globalized the reserve army of labor (making the entire periphery scabs).
I expect that Teamsters and unions involved in logistics will continue to go hard because they have uniquely loadbearing functions.
Unions will continue to be regulated by the US government but would hopefully figure out that without the NLRB pressuring companies to negotiate the workers would have to do it themselves.
Most likely though the courts will say it's up to the states and then each blue state will have a labor relations board like many already do for workers not covered under the NLRA and zero new organizing will happen or be supported in red and purple states as industries are slowly shipped out of areas with union presence and the unions reach their eventual demise.
This. Reading about its creation in my US labor course was heartbreaking and even the pretty radical textbook didn't seem to care about the obvious problem the NLRB serves for workers power
NLRB was an essential part of the destruction of the working class movements that preceded it. If unions are no longer regulated by the US government, they can exert more pressure in more effective ways.
Or they will just cease to exist. They will be deemed illegal and everything will become a wildcat strike. This take feels like accelerationist but for labor unions
Okay so the neoliberal union machine run by the US government that represents 10% of workers will be disbanded, and then workers will have to break the law to get what they want? This is bad because we respect the law and think that unions should be yoked by the US government? This is bad because the workers with the largest concessions afforded by the US government will lose those concessions and no longer have an economic incentive to maintain the status quo? Do we not like wildcat strikes? What is your critique here?
Things are accelerating, contradictions are sharpening, the economy is crumbling and fascism is on the rise. Are we not allowed to have an honest analysis of the situation? Is that accelerationism? The treat factory is ending, inshallah, and the treat addled mind along with it. When people awaken from this haze and realize they are gonna have to break the law to survive, maybe they will actually join with the rest of us who have been living this way the whole time. Maybe instead of wishing to protect the institutional systems designed to destroy the labor movement, we should celebrate their downfall and the downfall of all of the institutions that keep the neoliberal fantasy alive. We are entering the best period for revolutionary organizing since the 60's and, as always, it is because the conditions have gotten bad enough that people will do something that would have been previously too uncomfortable. I did not organize for this to happen, nothing I did or thought accelerated this situation into being, but this has obviously been where we are going for a long time and now we are here.
Rooting on the failure of the NLRB in hopes that it creates the contradictions needed for an uprising of the labor movement is naive. As we currently see in the labor movement when the ruling class threatens workers ability to eat and have a shelter they cave and I don't think this is simply because institutional powers tell them to. I think there's plenty of critique for these institutions, but what organizational power do leftists have in the labor movement to move people once there is no NLRB or its power removed so much it becomes meaningless?
Again, the NLRB affects 10% of workers, it is already meaningless to the most marginalized and oppressed workers; to nearly every worker. The union itself should be the organizational power, but the NLRB means they the power rests in a government body instead of the workers themself. What power did workers have before the NLRB? Considering it was their power that forced the government to create the NLRB in response, obviously it was a lot. The idea that anyone is rooting for this in hopes of it helping is naive and misguided, the point is that it is happening anyway and contradictions are getting sharper for many reasons, this being one of them. That is happening and we need to incorporate that into our analysis and be prepared to organize with that reality in mind
The power does exist within the workers. The NLRB if it were to truly be pro labor would be a full extension arm of labor. I find no contradiction in having a federal labor bureaucratic agency that protects the rights of labor. The fact that agency could be used to destroy labor unions should be fought and a fight leftist should show up to.
Yes and the senate and house and presidency, if only the were truly pro worker, would be great for labor. It's almost if we live in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the state is a tool of the ruling class to oppress the working class or something
Unions and all the money and infrastructure don’t “cease to exist,” if nlrb goes away. Everything becoming a wildcat strike was how it was when American labor power was greatest
IMO you're wrong to assume that forcing all labor actions to be illegal will unshackle a very powerful labor movement in the US. Surveillance is a hundred times what it was in the apogee of the labor movement. The thing that made the labor movement strong at that time was the material conditions of the time: America was rapidly industrializing and conditions were very poor for workers. Now, while conditions are obviously far from good, the neoliberals seem to have found a compromise for labor aristocracy to get enough shallow pleasures on borrowed money that US labor is nowhere near as radical as before, and offshoring industry has globalized the reserve army of labor (making the entire periphery scabs).
I expect that Teamsters and unions involved in logistics will continue to go hard because they have uniquely loadbearing functions.
I never said it would, merely that changing this law would not kill the organized labor in America
There is no such thing as accelerationism. Things will get to the point that they will have to be changed or they will not.
Probably one reason they're so excited at the ruling saying unions can get fined/charged for losses during strikes
Unions will continue to be regulated by the US government but would hopefully figure out that without the NLRB pressuring companies to negotiate the workers would have to do it themselves.
Most likely though the courts will say it's up to the states and then each blue state will have a labor relations board like many already do for workers not covered under the NLRA and zero new organizing will happen or be supported in red and purple states as industries are slowly shipped out of areas with union presence and the unions reach their eventual demise.
They can also have bombs dropped on them
This. Reading about its creation in my US labor course was heartbreaking and even the pretty radical textbook didn't seem to care about the obvious problem the NLRB serves for workers power
Labor's Untold Story does a decent job covering it and the later Taft-Hartley act within the scope of the US labor movement