To most Americans, the NLRB is just another four-letter acronym for a little-understood government agency.

For American workers and union members, the agency that was set up to defend their rights is akin to just another four-letter word.

Former Michigan Democratic Congressman David Bonior, who chairs a worker advocacy group called American Rights at Work, said "workers who stand up for themselves are now in double jeopardy - attacked by their employer and abandoned by the federal agency created to protect them."

The NLRB was set up under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which was passed to protect the right of American workers "to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing." The federal law requires that once workers form a union, the employer and the union are obligated to bargain "in good faith." Both parties must "meet as reasonable times" and productively confer about "wages, hours and other conditions of employment."

According to American Rights at Work, "a simple but effective union busting strategy for employers is to avoid meaningful bargaining at all costs. 'You haven't lost until you sign a contract,' consultants tell employers." The group said 32 percent of workers who demonstrate majority support for union representation lack a collective bargaining agreement one year later.

Recent rulings made by President Bush-appointees to the five-member NLRB indicate that things are going to get worse before they get better for workers. NLRB members are appointed by the president with Senate confirmation to five-year terms, with one member's term expiring each year. Senate Democrats have blocked two of Bush's appointees, so the NLRB currently only has three members - two Republicans and one Democrat.

Traditionally, the NLRB doesn't overturn previous board decisions with less than three votes. In 2004, the Republicans enjoyed a brief 3-1 majority on the board, when Bush was able to make a temporary recess appointment. All three Bush appointees had backgrounds supporting corporations.

The result: several anti-worker rulings were made by the NLRB:

• It was made lawful for employers to prohibit communications between workers expressing displeasure or anger over working conditions.
• The NLRB made it more difficult for workers to receive legal protection from employer threats. For example, the onus has been placed on employees to prove that an employer threatened to close a plant in order to thwart a union organizing drive.
• Temporary workers who want to organize with regular employees, must now get permission of both the temp agency and the employer.
• Graduate students and research assistants - who perform work similar to college faculty - have no legally protected right to organize.
• In June, the three Bush nominees voted to overturn a 30-year-old rule that offered one of the few workplace protections for nonunion workers: the right to have a co-worker accompany them to the boss's office for a disciplinary interrogation.
• The NLRB has also made it harder for workers to form a union by attacking the right of workers to unionize with a simple majority by signing cards, called "card check."

The board's Republican majority, wrote Tom Robbins of The Village Voice, "has been working overtime… and churning out decisions that have rolled back advances that unions and workers had made under prior boards."

Beyond the actions of the NLRB against workers, The Bush Administration has moved to take away bargaining rights for tens of thousands of Homeland Security employees. In addition, last year the president strongly pushed for, and won, a rule that could end up stripping more than half a million workers eligibility to overtime, by simply reclassifying the workers as "supervisors."

Bush is also promoting a plan to allow employers to require workers to accept compensatory time off in lieu of being paid overtime.

The President has also failed to endorse the Employee Free Choice Act, federal legislation which would provide meaningful protections for workers who wish to form unions and bargain.

"While the President pushes his agenda of spreading freedom around the world, the U.S. badly needs to address the state of affairs for workers at home," said Bonior. "As a result of employer anti-union campaigns, backed by weak labor laws, more than 23,000 workers are fired or experience discrimination every year for attempting to exercise their freedom of association."

The AFL-CIO stated last year: "The National Labor Relations Board has entered one of the most shameful chapters in its 69-year history. In theory, the NLRB is the leading federal agency mandated to uphold and protect the freedom of America's workers to form unions and bargain collectively. In practice, with a working majority appointed by President Bush, the NLRB has been perverted into a dangerous enemy of workers' rights."