Hope? Change? Transparency?

In the dark of the night, Big Labor puppets at the National Labor Relations Board passed new rules to force “quickie” labor elections without many people even knowing they were considering the provision in the first place. The lone Republican on the Board blasted the majority for skipping critical steps that would have alerted the public that they were even considering such a move.  The Investor Business Daily’s Sean Higgins weighs in:

Lost in the clamor over Tuesday’s proposed National Labor Relations Board rules for labor elections was how surprising the action was in the first place. The NLRB was not reacting to any legislation or court ruling. It simply decided to come up with new rules on its own. Nobody outside the NLRB itself even knew about them until they were leaked to the AP Tuesday morning.

That was apparently deliberate. In his official dissent, the NLRB’s lone Republican appointee, Brian Hayes, claimed that the board’s majority skipped numerous steps that would have alerted the public to what it was considering.

Hayes conceded the majority’s action was in “technical compliance” with the Administrative Procedure Act. Nevertheless, the practical effect is that the three Democrat appointees are speeding up the rulemaking process and making it more secretive.

Peter Schaumber, a former Republican appointee to the NLRB who served as chairman, told reporters today that board members appeared to have acted to avoid triggering any “sunshine laws” that require government officials to conduct business in the open.

“It shows the extent to which they went to avoid getting any public involvement,” Schaumber said.