Republicans warp the labor board.

• Author: Moberg, David
• Position: National Labor Relations Board

Over the past four years, Fred Feinstein has worked hard at his job as a federal law-enforcement official. He made his agency more efficient and effective, boosted the spirits of a demoralized staff, set appropriate priorities, and above all made sure that the law was firmly and uniformly enforced. But when his name came up for reappointment, top Republican leaders in the Senate pledged to fight him vigorously and, despite White House backing, he realized he would almost certainly lose. So in March, Feinstein reluctantly withdrew his name.

You might expect Republicans to cheer such an exemplary law-enforcement officer, but Feinstein is the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the chief attorney charged with enforcing the nation's labor law. It was precisely because he was so conscientious that conservative Republicans, at the urging of big business lobbyists, were determined to get rid of him.

"The reason Fred Feinstein is not being reappointed is because he did his job," says Carl Frankel, general counsel of the United Steelworkers. "For the first time in many years we had someone who believed in aggressive enforcement of the act. The companies have someone pursuing them, and they're uncomfortable about that."

Especially since winning their majority in Congress, Republicans have waged an unrelenting assault on this small agency. Although the battle is sometimes fought in the lingo of legal arcana, it is really about power: Should workers be able to organize in the workplace in ways that effectively counterbalance the power of their employers?

More than sixty years ago, Congress answered affirmatively by passing the National Labor Relations Act, which explicitly encouraged collective bargaining. By extension, that means it was--and still is, by law at least--public policy to encourage workers to organize into unions.

But American employers never fully accepted unions, and the law almost immediately came under attack. Federal courts began trimming back the new rights Congress had given workers, often by arguing that the common-law rights of property owners took precedence. As early as 1939, Republicans and Dixiecrats in Congress began attacking and red-baiting the new NLRB. In 1947, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which restrained union rights and expanded management prerogatives but still preserved the public policy commitment to collective bargaining.

Throughout its history, the NLRB has tilted slightly more...