42 GOP Senators Challenge Obama's So-Called NLRB "Recess" Appointments

42 GOP Senators Challenge Obama's So-Called NLRB "Recess" Appointments

Forty-Two United States Senators have joined with the National Right to Work Legal Foundation in protesting President Obama's illegal appointment to the National Labor Relations Board: [media-credit name=" " align="alignright" width="150"][/media-credit]Forty-two Republican senators filed an amicus brief this week in the case of Noel Canning Div. of Noel Corp. v. NLRB, D.C. Cir., No. 12-1115, arguing that the Board lacks a quorum because President Obama's January 2012 recess appointments were invalid. Employer Noel Canning has petitioned the Court of Appeals to deny enforcement to a Board decision by a three-member panel. Among their arguments, the employer asserts that panel members Sharon Block and Terence F. Flynn were not confirmed by the Senate and that Congress was in session at the time of their purported recess appointments.
It Can get Worse for Workers

It Can get Worse for Workers

Union officials have a key ally in the drive to force more workers to pay union dues for the privilege of working – the National Labor Relations Board,   Fred Wszolek argues: Under the Obama Administration, Big Labor has seized control of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) to drive its self-interested agenda – a truly unprecedented development in the history of the NLRB. In the past, Board law has changed when control moved from one political party to another. But never before has a Board majority conducted itself in such unprincipled partisan manner, ramming through an extremist agenda and dissembling about it. Three examples demonstrate the point: The NLRB stripped workers of their right to a secret ballot election to challenge their employer’s recognition of a union by card check despite the fact that 25 percent of the elections held resulted in ousting the union. The Board simply declared that the numbers were insufficient to warrant a delay in the commencement of collective bargaining. The Board hurriedly enacted a “quickie” or “ambush” election rule significantly reducing the time between a petition and an election. The rule will limit the ability of employers to express their views on unionization and deprive employees of their right to hear those views and make an informed choice. The NLRB cited a “delay” in holding elections as a reason for the rule even though its own Acting General Counsel reported that Board elections were being held in a “remarkably” timely fashion. The NLRB ignored the National Labor Relations Act (Act) it administers and overturned seventy years of Board precedent to allow a union to organize a minority of the employer’s workforce through tiny bargaining units made up of two or more employees (“micro-unions”). The NLRB sought to downplay the significance of this controversial decision by describing it as “a relatively modest” change” that reflects “decades of Board and judicial precedent.” But, as Board member Brian Hayes said in dissent, it was a “fundamental change” inconsistent with the Act and long-standing NLRB law that would impact “any industry over which the Board has jurisdiction.” But The Worst May Be Yet To Come The Obama Labor Board is now poised to make additional, major changes in the nation’s labor laws, but without a single Republican Board member, like Brian Hayes, having the opportunity to object and express an opposing view. This was made possible by the Obama Labor Board’s elimination of a 63-year-old institutional practice not to issue major decisions without the participation of members from both political parties.
NLRB'S Overreach

NLRB'S Overreach

[media-credit id=7 align="alignright" width="150"][/media-credit]In their aggressive overreach to help the union bosses, the National Labor Relations Board has a devastating string of courtroom losses that are putting them back into place.  The House Education and Workforce Committee looks at their grasp for more power: This week, the Obama National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) suffered yet another defeat in federal court. On Monday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg – appointed to the federal bench last year by President Obama – rejected the board’s recent ambush election rule. During the final days of 2011, the Obama labor board jammed through the regulatory process sweeping changes to long-standing rules governing union elections, changes that undermine employer free speech and worker free choice. As Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline noted: The Obama board’s rush to enact this rule before it loses its quorum confirms what my Republican colleagues and I have suspected all along – this board is not fighting for the best interests of our workforce, but instead is determined to advance an activist, pro-union agenda at any cost. Yet in their haste to adopt a flawed rule, board members Mark Pearce and Craig Becker neglected to follow the law. Citing Hollywood icon Woody Allen, Judge Boasberg writes: Eighty percent of life is just showing up. When it comes to satisfying a quorum requirement, though, showing up is even more important than that. Indeed, it is the only thing that matters – even when the quorum is constituted electronically. In this case, because no quorum ever existed for the pivotal vote in question, the Court must hold that the challenged rule is invalid.
NLRB'S Overreach

NLRB'S Overreach

[media-credit id=7 align="alignright" width="150"][/media-credit]In their aggressive overreach to help the union bosses, the National Labor Relations Board has a devastating string of courtroom losses that are putting them back into place.  The House Education and Workforce Committee looks at their grasp for more power: This week, the Obama National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) suffered yet another defeat in federal court. On Monday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg – appointed to the federal bench last year by President Obama – rejected the board’s recent ambush election rule. During the final days of 2011, the Obama labor board jammed through the regulatory process sweeping changes to long-standing rules governing union elections, changes that undermine employer free speech and worker free choice. As Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline noted: The Obama board’s rush to enact this rule before it loses its quorum confirms what my Republican colleagues and I have suspected all along – this board is not fighting for the best interests of our workforce, but instead is determined to advance an activist, pro-union agenda at any cost. Yet in their haste to adopt a flawed rule, board members Mark Pearce and Craig Becker neglected to follow the law. Citing Hollywood icon Woody Allen, Judge Boasberg writes: Eighty percent of life is just showing up. When it comes to satisfying a quorum requirement, though, showing up is even more important than that. Indeed, it is the only thing that matters – even when the quorum is constituted electronically. In this case, because no quorum ever existed for the pivotal vote in question, the Court must hold that the challenged rule is invalid.
Standing up for Workers? Hardly!

Standing up for Workers? Hardly!

For decades, Thomas Sowell has been a voice of reason and that voice continues with his latest column, "The Last Thing Unions Are Concerned About Is Free Choice For Workers." Sowell writes: Labor unions, like the United Nations, are all too often judged by what they are envisioned as being — not by what they actually are or what they actually do. Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people from their employers. And union bosses still employ that kind of rhetoric. However, someone once said, "When I speak I put on a mask, but when I act I must take it off." That mask has been coming off, more and more, especially during the Obama administration, and what is revealed underneath is very ugly, very cynical and very dangerous. As workers in the private sector have, over the years, increasingly voted to reject joining unions, union bosses have sought to replace secret ballots with signed documents — signed in the presence of union organizers and under the pressures, harassments or implicit threats of those organizers.Now that the administration has appointed a majority of the National Labor Relations Board members, the NLRB has imposed new requirements that employers give union organizers with the names and home addresses of every employee. Nor do employees have a right to decline to have this personal information given out to union organizers, under NLRB rules. In other words, union organizers will now have the legal right to pressure, harass or intimidate workers on the job or in their own homes, in order to get them to sign up with the union.