NLRB: You can't strike over politics

It looks like the government doesn't think that labor should mess around with politics.

An overlooked order by the Labor Board’s lead lawyer this summer dealt a serious blow to the rights of U.S. workers to protest government policies.

On May Day 2006, hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers walked off their jobs to protest restrictive immigration legislation. Some were fired, and brought complaints to the board. Ronald Meisburg, the National Labor Relations Board general counsel, responded by posting a directive on “political advocacy” this July that enables bosses to immediately fire employees who participate in work stoppages of a political nature.

The directive, as yet apparently unnoticed by both unions and labor lawyers, cannot be appealed.

Traditionally, workers around the world have used two kinds of walkouts to achieve their goals, economic strikes over workplace issues and political strikes directed at government policies.

Political strikes in the U.S. are not as common as in Europe and Latin America. But they have happened, as in the 1970s strike by coal miners for black lung legislation and in this year’s walkout by West Coast dock workers against the Iraq war.

A generation ago they outlawed the General Strike. Now they outlaw political strikes. You know what comes next.

Update [RO]: actual ruling attached to this post.

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wait a second

These are people in the U.S. illegally? Then, they shouldn't even be working here, never mind protesting US policy for they are not even authorized to be in the US.

So, I don't see the point here at all. U.S. jobs are for U.S. workers, not people who border jumped without authorization and took a job.

The article is completely obfuscated whether these workers are illegal or not but if they are, they shouldn't have the job in the 1st place so it's quite unclear if this ruling has any basis on U.S. labor for they are refusing to differentiate between US workers and illegal workers. Illegal workers are....illegal, so of course they could not have their jobs back because they are not supposed to have those jobs in the first place...

so it's quite unclear here if this is the ruling the title states....

Perhaps this article is ignoring that fact and thus misstating the ruling?

Let's see the original text of the ruling and who specifically made the complaint and if they are legal, authorized to be in the U.S. or not.

Legal Action

There is an action by Programmer's Guild in Federal Court here. A 'band of brothers' against Homeland Security Rules.
We are proving that there is an absence of regulation of H1B Visas by Homeland Security.

My part is to prove discrimination/fraud by locat body shops who not only discrimate but use 'deposits' required to get part time work.

Burton Leed

attached ruling

I attached the actual ruling to the point versus translate it through "interested parties" who are "open border advocates".

I read through the ruling and what they are saying is this particular protest does not directly relate to working conditions because in essence, they were generally 'advocating' and also protesting the enforcement of US labor law...which basically won't affect negatively US legal workers. They also are saying a political philosophy the employers have zero control over and that's true, this is US federal labor law and immigration policy and not a specific issue of labor law, directly affecting legal US workers isn't something that is protected.

It's about this particular instance not being covered and from what I'm reading as well as the protests arguing against enforcement of US employment law....well, to me the ruling looks about right.

It's subtle, I may be wrong but I don't think this limited political protests at all for US workers.

I think you have a spin article being promoted by open border/illegal immigrant advocates that isn't quite right in consequences of the ruling for legal US workers.