Steven Greenhouse on the National Labor Relations Board's ongoing assault on just labor relations:

The Republican-dominated board has made it more difficult for temporary workers to unionize and for unions to obtain financial information from companies during contract talks. It has ruled that graduate students working as teaching assistants do not have the right to unionize at private universities, and it has given companies greater flexibility to use a powerful antiunion weapon - locking out workers - in labor disputes. And in a decision that will affect 87 percent of American workers, the board has denied nonunion employees the right to have a co-worker present when managers call them in for investigative or disciplinary meetings. The party-line decisions have been applauded by the Republican Party's business base, which sees them as bringing balance after rulings that favored labor during the Clinton administration. But some academic experts on labor relations say the recent rulings are so hostile to unions and to collective bargaining that they run counter to the goals of the National Labor Relations Act, the 1935 law that gave Americans the right to form unions. "These decisions come close to or even match the Reagan board in their intensity and vigor in promoting employer powers," said James A. Gross, a professor at Cornell University who has written several books about the board. "They are pressing the outer limits of what could be a reasonable or legitimate interpretation of the balance between employer prerogatives and worker rights. In my mind, this is fundamentally inconsistent with the purpose of the National Labor Relations Act, which is to encourage the practice and procedures of collective bargaining." Robert J. Battista, the labor board's chairman, denied that the panel was stretching the law to help corporations. "All the cases that we've decided have been well reasoned," Mr. Battista said. "They're certainly consistent with the act. I wouldn't characterize them as pro-business or pro-union. I'd like to say they're pro-employee."

These decisions are about as pro-employee as a hole in the head.