Dem-Packed NLRB May Rush Through Pro-Union Rulings

After years of inactivity, the National Labor Relations Board is set to come roaring back. And everyone expects it to give Big Labor a new edge in its dealings with management.

Thanks to two recent NLRB recess appointments by President Obama, employers are bracing for new rules on workplace organizing efforts, including how and when the elections are held, which employees can be organized, what data must be turned over to unions during elections and what access they would have to workplaces.

Business could also face new restrictions on what they can tell employees during elections and new penalties that can be assessed for violating the NLRB rules, including mandatory unionization.

A reminder of the Soviet/Stalinist approach to labor unions:

Note the absenteeism policies, and, think, under Obamacare, the eventual application of Soviet style absenteeism policy to Obamacare absenteeism (missed appointments, food stamp limitations, etc). History offers the paths chosen by men and the results....we are not headed down a desirable path.

http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/labor-discip.html

Workers’ living standards declined sharply from 1928 to 1933 by at least half, to a bare subsistence level. Part of this was the disastrous outcome of agricultural Collectivization, but part of it was deliberate policy: to finance the forced industrialization of the First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932) by squeezing the workers with simultaneous pay-cuts and production speed-ups. After 1933, living standards began to recover, but only precariously. For example, by 1937, wages had climbed back to 60% of the 1928 level. Nearly all investment was directed to heavy industry and weapons, rather than consumer goods for working families. Despite a shortage of workers for new industrial projects, fierce repression of independent union activity ensured that wages would remain low.

Lower wage levels were not the only indicator of poverty. (After all, money has only limited value in a rationed “access” economy.) Equally important were wretched housing conditions, especially in industrial complexes outside established cities: overcrowded, sometimes unheated barracks, or even pits in the ground (”zemlyanki”). For ideological reasons, the Soviet government had destroyed any private housing market, that otherwise might have taken some of the slack. Government food supplies were often scant (requiring much waiting in lines) and sometimes rotten; private food suppliers had been wiped out by Collectivization. Local public transport was crowded and unreliable, if it existed at all.

(The wonderful Moscow Metro, first opened at a few stations in the 1930s, was only a showcase, in no way representative of conditions on buses and streetcars, especially outside the capital. In many areas, the only transport was by foot along muddy unpaved roads. One should not confuse the Stalin era with the more settled Khrushchov and Brezhnev periods, where a real effort was made to provide most urban working families with some sort of housing, public transport, and tolerable [even if not luxurious] living standards.)

Nevertheless, when workers got fed up with conditions at one site, they were free to quit and go look for something better. And this was no mere “freedom to starve”; Stalin’s forced industrialization meant that plenty of jobs were available, even if low-paid. Or, if workers didn’t want to move, they might simply take days off or show up late.

Nominally, by 1932, absentees were to be fired; quitters (and discharged absentees) were to barred from housing and rations, and were to be blacklisted from new employment. See, for example

Decree of the Central Executive Committee and Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR, “On Firing for Unexcused Absenteeism,” 15 Nov 1932
Source: “Pravda,” 16 Nov 1932, p. 1

In reality, these sanctions were widely ignored, partly because they were unenforceable: an attempt in 1930 to impose “labor books” (labor passports, required for getting new jobs, listing all previous work and the conditions for discharge) had been quietly frustrated by shopfloor resistance. In addition, managers, desperate for additional workers, would hire them without too rigid an examination of their past. Some workers deliberately showed up late in order to force their firing, so that they could get a better job elsewhere.

In late 1938, however, after he had exterminated his former political opponents, Comrade Stalin was ready to settle accounts with the workers.

His first measure was a requirement for labor books. Unlike the 1930 law, this one was enforced; society by now was thoroughly cowed.

Decree of SNK SSSR, 20 Dec 1938, “O vvedenii Trudovykh knizhek”, Pravda, 21 December 1938.
(Russian text only; English translation may be posted later)

Now that labor books gave the government leverage, this was followed by a major revision of the labor code:

Resolution of the SNK SSSR, CK VKP(b), and VCSPS
“On Measures for the regulation of labor discipline, improvement in the practice of state social insurance, and struggle against abuses in that matter,” 28 Dec 1938.1
(partial text available in Russian, or in English translation).

This restated the 1930 and 1932 penalties for quitting and absenteeism (mandatory firing, blacklisting, and loss of social benefits, eg housing, food rations, and social insurance). Managers who failed to obey and enforce these laws were subject to dismissal and criminal prosecution.

On 8 January 1939, the government made clear that an unauthorized lateness of 20 minutes (or taking a break 20 minutes too long, or leaving 20 minutes early) counted as absenteeism, grounds for mandatory dismissal (Pravda, 9 Jan 1939). Transportation breakdowns (a common event) were no excuse; a doctor’s certificate was required, and doctors who gave certificates too easily themselves faced prosecution and prison.

Some workers still found it worthwhile to be absent and force a mandatory dismissal, so that they could seek work in a place where labor books were not closely read. Stalin put an end to this with a remarkable law,

Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, 26 June 1940
“On the Transfer to the Eight-Hour Working Day, the Seven-day Work Week, and on the Prohibition of Unauthorized Departure by Laborers and Office Workers from Factories and Offices2”

This replaced the civil sanctions of the 28 Dec. 1938 decree with mandatory criminal penalties: 2-4 months imprisonment for quitting a job, and 6 months of probation and 25% pay confiscation for an unauthorized tardiness of 20 minutes. Both managers and prosecutors were themselves subject to criminal prosecution if they did not enforce this law strictly.

Comment from the Ideology Dept:

To the petit-bourgeois mentality, these laws might suggest that Comrade Stalin was anti-labor. Nothing could be further from the truth. The difference between the Soviet Union and capitalist societies is that Soviet workers are building their own future, while Western workers are exploited for the advantage of greedy capitalists. As testimony from trade unions reveals, Soviet workers themselves were fed up at the frustration of their efforts by slackers, parasites, and self-seekers. They were grateful for this evidence that the Soviet Government took their concerns seriously.

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