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NLRB 29 Unfair Labor Practice Charges Against Community Health Systems, Inc. Shows Industry Labor Risks

A 29-count unfair labor practices complaint brought by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against national hospital giant, Community Health Systems, Inc. and seven of its hospitals (CHS), reminds other hospital and health care systems about the need to take steps to maintain and strengthen the defensibility of their own union organizing and other labor-management relations processes.

The…

It ought to be on the record that the President did not take part in developing the National Labor Relations Act and, in fact, was hardly consulted about it. It was not a part of the President's program. It did not particularly appeal to him when it was described to him. All the credit for it belongs to Wagner.

The proposed bill, it must be remembered, was remedial. Certain unfair practices which employers had used against workers to prevent unionization and to cripple their economic strength had been uncovered by Wagner in the administration of Section 7-A of NRA. The bill sought to correct these specific, known abuses, and did not attempt to draw up a comprehensive code of ethical behavior in labor relations. Such a comprehensive code, however, was needed. Roosevelt supported my suggestion that labor leaders who wanted to distinguish themselves should draw up such a code and let us take a look at it. A code developed by labor itself even now might be both knowing and practical and might evoke the adherence of the great body of labor people. Principles so arrived at might be added to the National Labor Relations Act in the future.

Since Senator Wagner was going to introduce a bill anyhow, we wanted it to be a good practical bill.

I was frank in my judgment that if the bill were to become law the National Labor Relations Board should be set up in the Department of Labor rather than as an independent agency. I had sound reasons; they seem just as sound now.

An independent agency makes too much demand upon the time and attention of the President, or else it ignores the general policies of the administration and becomes doctrinaire. Moreover, there had long existed in the Department of Labor a Division of Conciliation. Its job was to adjust industrial disputes, and its mediation rested strongly upon a basis of voluntary cooperation. If the new activity were lodged in the Department of Labor we should be able, by the conference method, to get agreement in most disputes. I argued also that it would be wise to concentrate in the Labor Department, a going concern, all problems concerned with labor. The selection and training of subordinate personnel would be likely to be more practical in an established experienced agency.

I made a strong argument for [the NLRB's] inclusion in the Department of Labor, but Wagner was opposed for reasons which, when viewed in retrospect, seem slightly humorous. 

"With all respect to you," he said, "I want to say that the people of this country think that the Department of Labor is pro-labor. If the NLRB were in the Department of Labor is pro-labor. If the NLRB were in the Department of Labor, I could never make them believe that the decisions of the Board would not be pro-labor."

One sometimes wonders a little ruefully whether or not this Board would not have been better off under the more pedestrian supervision of the Department of Labor. One does not know. However, the Labor Department was never accused of being more pro-labor than the National Labor Relations Board, and those accusations grew more extreme and exaggerated as time went on.

In any case, Wagner held firmly to his view that the Board should be set up as an independent agency. The bill was prepared that way. 

...

I had thought, originally, and so reported to the President, that the National Labor Relations bill was unlikely to become law. I felt sure that labor would object, for the recognition of a union under the NLRA would depend upon the counting of noses. A labor union would have to prove it had the backing of a majority of the workers in a plant. This was certainly new doctrine in 1934. 

It had not been AF of L policy in the past to count noses before a committee went in to see the boss to demand better wages, hours, and working conditions. No labor union had ever asked a government board to tell it whether they could represent a whole factory or one department or one craft. That was the union leader's judgment. Closed shops had been gained by bold methods at times. This bill would make that impossible. A union would have to prove majority support. 

I expected Matthew Woll and William Green of the AFL to tell me that they were opposed to the Wagner bill. They were enthusiastically in favor of it. I remember Woll saying with a superior smile, "My dear Miss Perkins, times have changed and we must change with them."

The thinkers of the AF of L were blind to future problems."