Guests at the Viejas Casino and Resort in Alpine, California. Photo by Viejas
Band of Kumeyaay Indians
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The Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians violated federal labor law by giving lower bonuses to union members, an administrative law judge ruled on Tuesday in the latest in a string of decisions that tribes say threatens their sovereignty.
The Viejas Casino and Resort in southern California is a "commercial enterprise" whose operation does not impact the tribe's ability to govern itself, Judge Mara-Louise Anzalone of the National Labor Relations Board asserted in the 17-page decision. The majority of its employees and customers are non-Indian and no treaty rights are implicated, she added.
"Finally," she wrote, "there is no evidence in the language or legislative history of the [National Labor Relations] Act to suggest that Congress intended to exclude Native Americans or their commercial enterprises from the Act’s jurisdiction."
The decision affirms a complaint a labor union filed against the casino. Employees who belong to United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, Local 135, received only one-half of the bonus given to non-members, which the judge said violates the National
Labor Relations Act.
The law, which was first enacted in 1935, a year after the Indian Reorganization Act, does not mention tribes at all. But it does exempt states and local governments and tribes say they should be treated the same as a matter of parity.
To address the situation, tribes are lobbying Congress to pass H.R.511,
the Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act. The bill does exactly what the judge wrote in the decision: it would "exclude Native Americans or their commercial enterprises from the [National
Labor Relations] Act’s jurisdiction."
The
House passed the bill last November but it hasn't been taken up in the Senate. The White House has raised
objections to the measure and labor unions -- which typically support Democrats -- oppose the bill.
The Viejas Band case is 21-CA-166290.
National Labor Relations Board Decision:
Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians d/b/a Viejas Casino & Resort v. United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, Local 135, AFL–CIO
(October 11, 2016)
$P From the Indianz.Com Archive:
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Federal labor board expands jurisdiction over
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