Huff Post: Marcus Hedger, Wrongfully Fired Worker, Loses His Home With NLRB In Limbo

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/marcus-hedger-nlrb_n_3314335.html

Posted: 05/23/2013 1:12 pm EDT | Updated: 05/23/2013 1:42 pm EDT

?6
Marcus Hedger lost his home after he was fired. The National Labor Relations Board has ordered him to be reinstated on the job, but Hedger's case is still pending due to political squabbles over appointments to the board. (Photo courtesy AFL-CIO)


WASHINGTON -- In the past three years, Marcus Hedger has lost a good-paying manufacturing job and a nice home in Antioch, Ill. Thanks to the dysfunction on Capitol Hill, there's no telling when he'll get either of them back.

Hedger, 56, worked as a pressman at a label-making plant run by the Fort Dearborn Company in Niles, Ill. In 2010, he was fired from his job. According to a federal judge, plant management illegally discriminated against Hedger in the firing because of his standing as a shop steward with the Teamsters union during a contract battle. The ruling entitled Hedger to backpay and reinstatement on the job.

Unfortunately for Hedger, his case went before the GOP pincushion that is the National Labor Relations Board, the quasi-judicial federal agency that enforces labor law. His favorable ruling -- first issued by an administrative law judge in 2011, then affirmed by the labor board itself in 2012 -- is currently tied up in the appeals process and could be tossed out amidst a legal and political fight over the board's legitimacy.

"It's two political factions fighting each other. That's fine when it's an election, but the election is over," Hedger told The Huffington Post. "It's time for both sides to get together and do the right thing for people like me who are waiting on line. Nothing can go forward until they do what's right for the people who elected them. And it's a lot more than just the labor board being held up."

FULL story at link.