House Measure Aims to Rein in Biden Bureaucrats

Employees of Many Small Firms Would Be Freed From NLRB Control

The National Right to Work Committee is now mobilizing Capitol Hill support for legislation that would sharply curtail the number of businesses and employees who are subject to the abusive power of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Since 2021, rabidly pro-forced unionism lawyers selected or elevated by President Joe Biden and confirmed by his Big Labor-backed allies in the U.S. Senate have controlled a majority of seats on the five-member Board as well as the office of the NRLB general counsel.

And for more than two years, the Biden NLRB has worked relentlessly to undercut the very limited statutory rights American employees have vis-à-vis union bosses in almost every way it could.

Labor Bureaucrats Serve Union Bosses 

While the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is steeply biased in Big Labor’s favor, it does include provisions guaranteeing certain limited rights for employees who don’t want to be unionized. And the NLRB is supposed to enforce the entire NLRA.

For example, the NLRB has a duty to facilitate union decertification elections, so that workers can remove an unwanted union from their workplace. But the Biden NLRB routinely stands in the way of such worker efforts. And now the Biden Board is preparing to overturn the Trump NLRB’s Election Protection Rules, which since 2020 have made it more difficult for union lawyers to hold up decertifications with bogus charges.

Meanwhile, the NLRB’s Bidenappointed general counsel, former union lawyer Jennifer Abruzzo, is attempting to routinize “card checks” that deny employees a secret-ballot vote over unionization by resurrecting and refurbishing long-discredited NLRB legal theories.

Ms. Abruzzo wants employers in almost every case to be forced to accept union “cards” as proof that their employees support unionization.

Even though signatures on union cards are coercively collected by union organizers, Ms. Abruzzo assumes that almost any employer who insists on a vote over unionization is operating in “bad faith.”

The NLRB recently released new rules that make it difficult for workers to be classified as independent contractors.

Though many workers prefer independent work arrangements over traditional employment, independent contractors aren’t subject to unionization, and therefore can’t be forced to pay union dues, so union bosses have long fought to eliminate independent work.

The NLRB’s new independent contractor rules are similar to those already in place in the state of California.

The California rules have driven firms out of the state in large numbers, and crippled the independent trucking industry.

NLRB Changes Labor Law With No Congressional Approval

Union bosses have long pushed the NLRB to enact their legislative aims when they are too unpopular to get past Congress.

The Biden NLRB has been so eager to do whatever the union hierarchy wants that some Big Labor academics are now being emboldened to argue that the NLRB should “reinterpret” labor law to allow “digital picketing.”

Under this scheme, every time a potential customer visited a targeted firm’s web site, a banner would appear across the screen exhorting him or her not to do business with the company until Big Labor says it’s okay!

A bill introduced by Virginia Congressman Bob Good, chairman of the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions, and supported by the National Right to Work Committee would take a first step toward reducing the harm wrought by the NLRB.

The Small Business Before Bureaucrats Act (H.R. 3400) would exempt most businesses making less than $500,000 annually from the NLRB’s jurisdiction. That threshold increases to $5 million for retail businesses.

The bill updates the limits established in 1958, which haven’t risen with inflation, subjecting numerous small businesses to NLRB control.

“The NLRB has time and time again proven itself to be an arm of Big Labor,” said Committee Vice President Greg Mourad. “Even when pro-worker majorities adopt helpful reforms like the Election Protection Rule, they are quickly overturned by subsequent Big Labor-backed appointees.

“Congress should do everything in its power to curtail, and ultimately eliminate altogether, the NLRB’s power to bully American employees and business owners.”

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