So Long, Labor Rights, June 2018
It’s been six years since Rich Ahearn retired from the staff of the National Labor Relations Board.
Early this year, Ahearn got word of an impending shakeup at the agency. In a conference call with current NLRB regional directors around the country, general counsel Peter Robb outlined a sweeping plan to restructure the agency, the federal government’s preeminent protector of workers’ rights.
Robb’s plan called for shutting down an unknown number of the NLRB’s twenty-six regional offices in favor of a system of larger regional offices. And it would strip the remaining regional directors of their authority to investigate and resolve violations of workers’ rights, instead handing that power over to a half-dozen or fewer midlevel executives.
Erik Gunn 