“Nurses need the protection and voice on the job that union membership provides,” says D’Abrosca, who has been a nurse at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in New London, Conn., for two years. She is also the vice president of her union at the hospital, Local 5049/AFT Healthcare.

That protection could be taken away by summer’s end when the National Labor Relations Board rules on a series of cases known collectively as Kentucky River. As with the Yeshiva Supreme Court case, which effectively made faculty at private colleges ineligible to bargain collectively, this NLRB decision is expected to categorize many nurses, building and construction trade workers, and others as supervisors and thus ineligible for protections under the National Labor Relations Act. Although such a ruling could strip nearly 8 million workers of their union rights, the board has refused to hear oral arguments as it considers the case.

In July, D’Abrosca was among thousands of union members and labor activists who took part in a week-long series of protests nationwide sponsored by the AFL-CIO in anticipation of the NLRB ruling.

In Connecticut, union nurse members gathered in front of the NLRB regional office in Hartford. A half dozen of the nurses, including D’Abrosca, met with NLRB officials  and presented them with a petition to reconsider its decision not to hear oral arguments on the nurse supervisor issue.

More than 1,000 union members and activists descended upon the NLRB headquarters in Washington, D.C., chanting, “We’re fired up, won’t take it no more,” and carrying signs that read “I won’t give up my voice at work” and “Don’t roll back workers’ rights.”

As protesters blocked the front doors of the NLRB and halted downtown traffic, AFL-CIO organizing director Stewart Acuff told the crowd, “This is just a small preview of the kind of massive disruptions that will occur across the country if the board rules against workers.”

In Milwaukee, Wis., the county labor council, which included members of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, staged a “kangaroo court” street play based on the NLRB’s refusal to hear oral arguments on the nurse supervisor issue. Hundreds of labor activists in attendance also marched to Puddler’s Hall, the oldest union hall in the state.

Members of the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, who were joined by Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, were among hundreds of union members who rallied downtown to encourage the NLRB to hold public hearings before ruling on the nurse supervisor issue.

A U.S. appeals court has dealt the latest blow to the Bush administration’s efforts to rewrite federal civil service laws and gut collective bargaining and due process in the name of national security.

A unanimous U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in late June upheld a lower court’s ruling barring implementation of labor relations provisions in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) new human resources system because they fail to ensure collective bargaining, a requirement under the Homeland Security Act (HSA) of 2002.

Cumulatively, the labor relations provisions “permit unilateral abrogation of collectively bargained contracts,” according to the 50-page decision that characterized the DHS’s position on collective bargaining as defying common sense. “To imagine that a system might ‘ensure collective bargaining’ without imposing mutual obligations is simply bizarre.”

The three-judge panel reversed the lower court’s ruling that the department could limit the scope of bargaining. Citing the lower court’s finding that “the human resources system essentially reduces collective bargaining to employee-specific terms affecting discipline, discharge and promotion,” the appeals court judges said “this is so far short of the meaning of [federal sector] collective bargaining” that it “does not meet the HSA’s requirement of bargaining in good faith over conditions of employment for purposes of reaching an agreement.”

Between limiting the scope of negotiable issues and providing management with unilateral rights to ignore agreements, the judges write that the system “does not even give an illusion of collective bargaining.”

After Sept. 11, , the HSA merged nearly two dozen federal agencies employing approximately 170,000 employees represented by 17 unions. DHS issued its final rule establishing the human resources system in February 2005.

In addition to DHS, the Bush administration is attempting to exploit congressional authorization to develop a new personnel system at the Department of Defense as well. In February, however, a district court blocked implementation of labor relations regulations in the Defense Department’s so-called National Security Personnel System (NSPS) because they “eviscerated collective bargaining” despite a congressional requirement that the new personnel system ensure it. NSPS covers more than 350,000 civilian Defense Department employees, including nearly 1,000 teachers on military bases worldwide who are represented by the AFT’s Overseas Federation of Teachers. More than three dozen unions have banded together to fight the DHS and Defense Department personnel systems.

Despite its legal defeats, the Bush administration is expected to pursue broader federal civil service changes after the November elections. The White House’s draft proposal is called the Working for America Act.