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By Daniel Baxter |
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March 12, 2011 - The House of Representatives will soon
debate and vote on the FAA Reauthorization and Reform
Act of 2011 (H.R. 658). Hidden deep in this legislation
is a provision that would overturn the National
Mediation Board’s (NMB) new voting rules for the
nation’s airline and railroad workers.
Sponsored by GOP House Transportation Committee Chairman
John Mica (R-FL), the provision would eliminate the new
democratic voting guidelines and restore a process that
has been used for decades by corporations to defeat
union organizing efforts in the transportation industry.
John L. Mica is the U.S. Representative for |
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The
Orlando Sentinel named Mica the 4th most powerful person in
Under the
old NMB voting rules, any worker who did not vote in a union
representation election was automatically counted as a vote
against the union. The new NMB rule, which determines the
outcome of representation elections in the same way as elections
for the U.S. President, Congress and nearly all state
representatives, was furiously opposed by the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce and the Air Transport Association (ATA), the lobbying
arm for the nation’s major air carriers.
The new
NMB voting does not, as opponents frequently claim, eliminate
secret ballot elections. It simply allows a majority of voting
employees to choose and eliminates the government’s unfair
practice of assigning a preference to those voters who do not
cast a ballot.
Last year’s change to NMB voting rules was rightfully hailed as a major victory for workers’ democratic voting rights. The effort to reverse that achievement is yet another effort by a coalition of right-wing extremists seeking to restrict, reduce and eradicate collective bargaining rights nationwide. |
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