The National Labor Relations Board, instituted as a result of the Wagner Act in 1935, and intended by the Roosevelt Administration to provide some measure of balance in Labor-Management relations by codifying workers rights to organize and form unions, is a sad shadow of its long ago self. This is the latest, published without comment in a few newspapers the other day.

The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that employers have the right to prohibit workers from using the company’s e-mail system to send out union-related messages, a decision that could hamper communications between labor unions and their membership.

In a 3-to-2 ruling released on Friday, the board held that it was legal for employers to prohibit union-related e-mail so long as employers had a policy barring employees from sending e-mail for “non-job-related solicitations” for outside organizations.

The ruling is a significant setback to the nation’s labor unions, which argued that e-mail systems have become a modern-day gathering place where employees should be able to communicate freely with co-workers to discuss work-related matters of mutual concern.

Restricting Unions

And in more Union news, Barak Obama took the un nerving step of attacking John Edwards for support coming to him by several union sponsored 527 entities, saying they are typical of Washington Special Interests. (!) Several on-line sources are picking up on this, campskunk at DailyKos and SusanUnPC at NoQuarter among them. For the best background to the importance of unions to the United States as we know it and defend it, and why Obama’s attacks are so troubling, see Paul Krugman’s column today.

Barack Obama, though he has a solid pro-labor voting record, has not — in part, perhaps, because his message of “a new kind of politics” that will transcend bitter partisanship doesn’t make much sense to union leaders who know, from the experience of confronting corporations and their political allies head on, that partisanship isn’t going away anytime soon.

O.K., that’s politics. But now Mr. Obama has lashed out at Mr. Edwards because two 527s — independent groups that are allowed to support candidates, but are legally forbidden from coordinating directly with their campaigns — are running ads on his rival’s behalf. They are, Mr. Obama says, representative of the kind of “special interests” that “have too much influence in Washington.”

The thing, though, is that both of these 527s represent union groups — in the case of the larger group, local branches of the S.E.I.U. who consider Mr. Edwards the strongest candidate on health reform. So Mr. Obama’s attack raises a couple of questions.

First, does it make sense, in the current political and economic environment, for Democrats to lump unions in with corporate groups as examples of the special interests we need to stand up to?

Second, is Mr. Obama saying that if nominated, he’d be willing to run without support from labor 527s, which might be crucial to the Democrats? If not, how does he avoid having his own current words used against him by the Republican nominee?