Worker "Disloyalty" Leads to Discharge; Employer Disloyalty Is Good for Business

[marmar]

Worker "Disloyalty" Leads to Discharge; Employer Disloyalty Is Good for Business

Monday, 19 August 2013 11:09
By Ellen Dannin and Ann C Hodges, Truthout | Opinion


The National Labor Relations Act protects the right of employees to join together to change working conditions. The law, as written by Congress, has no exception to this protection. But that doesn't mean the courts couldn't create exceptions big enough to drive a fleet of trucks through.

In fact, the blanket protection Congress put into the NLRA has been eaten full of holes by judicial moths. It's hard to decide which of the judicial amendments creates the most outrageous exception to the law's protection, but making employee disloyalty into a cardinal sin certainly deserves an award for chutzpah and judicial overreach.

The basic problem is that the word is so vague, it is easy to manipulate. If asked what employee "disloyalty" is, many people might say "stealing employer property." Take organizing a union, for example, or employees' complaints about working conditions. The NLRA actually says that organizing unions and participating in concerted activity to change working conditions are protected. But these are also behaviors that judges have put into the category of disloyalty in some cases.

According to the Supreme Court in the 1953 case of NLRB v. Local 1229, IBEW (Jefferson Standard), disloyal employees lose the protections of the National Labor Relations Act, even though the employees' actions are precisely what Congress intended to protect. As time has passed, the category called disloyal actions has expanded, making it ever easier for employers to deprive workers of their rights under the law. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/18273-employee-disloyalty-leads-to-discharge-employer-disloyalty-is-good-for-business

[Brigid]

1. I remember hearing about the Malden Mills fire,

Which is mentioned in this piece. An amazing story -- and all too rare. Sadly, according to the story I find at the link, turns out Mr. Fuerstein lost control of the company to creditors.