Union rights in the crosshairs

The Economic Policy Institute has a paper, "Supervisor in name only" that highlights the Kentucky River cases, which, depending on the outcome, could result in millions of workers with no responsibility for hiring, firing and disciplinary actions being classified as supervisors and therefore "be denied the right to form unions or engage in collective bargaining".  The case is a test of how anti-labor the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has become after 6 years of Bush.  Examples of some of the occupations where the ruling has the power to affect includes Registered Nurses, Cooks, Secretaries, and even Chemistry Teachers, hardly jobs expected to have significant supervisory roles as they are currently thought of under the National Labor Relations Act.  In fact, the act defines supervisors as:

Any individual having authority, in the interest of the employer, to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action, if in connection with the foregoing the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment. (29 USC 152 (11))

This case could help put the nail in the coffin of organized labor, something the Republican party and the business interests which fund it have dreamed about for a long time.  If the NLRB has any decency and respect for labor unions and the fundamental right of workers to unionize, it will uphold the rights of nurses, chemistry teachers, cooks and many other non-supervisory workers to unionize and overturn a bogus attempt by anti-labor business interests to subvert the intent of the National Labor Relations Act.