If punishing employees in Right to Work states isn’t enough to please the union bosses, then the NLRB continues to try. Their latest giveaway is an effort to impose “quickie elections” — a blatant effort to ensure that workers do not get both sides of the unionization issue.
The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein looks at the latest union bailout:
With union membership precipitously declining (it was less than 7 percent in the private sector last year), big labor has been desperate to expand its ranks by any means necessary.
As Peter Schaumber, former NLRB chairman, warned last week, “Imagine a political election in which only one party were given the opportunity to tell voters its side of the story, and could set an election date only days away, all without prior notice to the other side.”
In other words, unions can spend all the time they want collecting signatures and making their case to workers, but then surprise an employer by calling an election at any time.
The board stopped short of granting a firm five to 10 day deadline that unions were hoping for, but the AP notes that:
The board’s lone Republican, Brian Hayes, issued a vigorous dissent, saying the proposal would result in the type of “quickie elections” union leaders have long sought. Hayes claimed elections could be held in as little as 10 to 21 days from the filing of a petition, giving employers less of a chance to make their case.
“Make no mistake, the principal purpose for this radical manipulation of our election process is to minimize or, rather, to effectively eviscerate an employer’s legitimate opportunity to express its views about collective bargaining,” Hayes wrote.
This needs an edit:
In some Board election campaigns employees are paid their normal wages while management makes this case for why a union is a bad deal.
Also the notion that management wouldn’t have notice of the election is a bald faced lie. He knows full well that the rules retain the notice provisions that were already in place. They simply shorten the time to election in some cases.
Like me to cite the regs Peter?
Unlike many of the Republicans spouting off on this issue, I know Peter Schaumber isn’t stupid and knows labor law. So his misrepresentations about these rules are knowing and intentional.
He knows full well that the proposed rules in question don’t deprive management of its rights under 8(c), and do nothing to deprive management of the many structural advantages it enjoys in these elections. Even less do these rules control the widespread application of coercion by employers before during and after elections.
Schaumber’s comparison with political elections is laughable. In political elections, one party can’t force voters to sit in captive audience meetings over and over again being bombarded with anti-union propoganda. But employers can force employees to do just that. In some Board election campaigns employees are forced to listen to as many as 6 full days of such propoganda. And management doesn’t even have to be accurate or honest in these meetings – the Board allows mispresentations.
What is really going on here? Schaumber and well paid management side lawyers and consultants want Board elections to move slowly because it allows more time to wear down, confuse, mislead and coerce voters. Management typically doesn’t use a single tactic, they bombard workers with a stream of threats, promises, lies, while interrogating, discharging, and threatening union supporters.
Schaumber lies. He knows full well management will still get their opportunity to speak their side. The mostly management side lawyers staffing out federal courts would never allow that right to be compromised.
But rules aimed at faster elections not only prevent management and their high paid lawyers from bogging down the system with frivilous motion and dilatory tactics, faster elections give managment and its lawyers slightly less time to coerce, bully and mislead employees.
That is why Schaumber and his type don’t like these rules. It has nothing to do with an imagined horrible of management not being able to speak its mind.