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Albany Strike Shows Stark Picture of What is Wrong With NLRB
and U.S. Labor Law

Richard Bensinger

Note: The organizing drive the Joint Board is conducting at the Albany Airport Holiday Inn Express is arguably the best — and starkest — example in America of precisely what is wrong with U.S. labor law and with the National Labor Relations Board. That’s the sobering assessment in the article below by Richard Bensinger. He is working extensively with the Joint Board and is widely acknowledged as one of the country’s most respected labor and organizing experts. A companion Bensinger article further elaborates on the enormous hurdles workers and unions face from the NLRB and current labor law. These two articles are “must reads” for any Joint Board member who really wants to understand the struggle we are engaged in. (Click here to see the other article).

During the early 1970’s, a bunch of my co-workers and I were fired from our factory jobs for organizing a union with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. It took six years for us to finally win back our jobs with back pay, and win a first contract. Back then, I thought the National Labor Relations Board was pretty useless.

But, the campaign at the Albany Airport Holiday Inn Express proves that the Labor Board and the labor laws are worse now than they have ever been.

The hotel, owned by local millionaire Jim Morrell, employs 28 people, and they were tired of the low pay, lack of benefits, and disrespect on the job. They contacted the Joint Board, and I told them the hard truth: if they wanted a union, they would have to go public and recruit support from a majority of their co-workers.

The workers bravely agreed to meet publicly at a restaurant near the hotel to form an organizing committee, and to write a leaflet they planned to distribute the next day with their names and group photo on it.

Unfortunately, the hotel’s general manager sat in his truck outside the restaurant to spy on the meeting. The next day, two of the key union leaders were fired. A day after that, a third was fired. Within a few weeks, a fourth was fired.

By firing the leaders of the union effort as soon as they went public, the hotel’s management knew precisely what they were doing. Under the current law, if an employer fires union supporters before the union has a chance to build a majority, it can never be ordered to bargain with the union.

Morrell knew that there would be no real penalties if he simply fired the organizing committee. He had every incentive to fire the union leaders, not simply to get rid of them personally — but to send the chilling message that anyone publicly supporting the union was risking his or her job.
Despite the fact that the Labor Board has found probable cause in three of the four cases to support the union’s claim that the workers were fired for union activity. After weeks and weeks, the Board finally issued a complaint essentially agreeing with all of our charges. But, what does Morrell and the hotel face from the NLRB complaint? Essentially simply paying the strikers back wages.

It is clear that it is not just the law that is the problem, but the people who work for this agency lack any commitment to justice for workers. Many are clearly bureaucrats who are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Their actions make it clear that they view it as Morrell’s decision whether to allow a union to exist — not the free choice of the workers.

Until the law is changed, and until there is a dramatic change in the Board itself, workers in America have no legal rights in trying to form a union.

Despite this daunting reality, the fired workers have courageously continued to strike to demand their right to organize. They have received support from people all over Albany — union members, clergy, students, and public figures.

The workers’ courage and the widespread support reinforce our vow to never give up until workers gain the fundamental right to organize. If the NLRB won’t defend the right to organize, the Rochester Regional Joint Board and our fellow unions will.