NLRB Tips Scales of Justice
A new congressional report has determined that the National Labor Relations Board has abandoned its role as an impartial arbitrator and has become an aggressive advocate for big labor: The National Labor Relations Board -- the federal agency tasked with protecting employees from unfair management or union practices -- has become a biased advocate for big labor, according to a newly released congressional report. The blunt assessment was offered in a staff report released Thursday by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform. "The NLRB is supposed to be a fair and neutral arbitrator. It's supposed to have a firewall between the judges, if you will, and representatives, as a plaintiff," Issa told Fox News. "Just the opposite is the case." The NLRB is designed much like an appeals court. The general counsel serves in a prosecutor-like role, and the five-member board acts as the jury. As in a court of law, rules forbid the two from communicating about pending cases. But NLRB emails turned over to the committee under force of subpoena reveal many such ex-parte communications, some of them dealing with the challenge to Boeing's decision to build a non-union assembly plant in South Carolina to augment production of the highly sought-after 787 Dreamliner. In one email obtained by the committee, the associate general counsel of the NLRB, Barry Kearney, praised a union press release about the Boeing case, stating, "hooray for the red, white, and blue." In another email, reacting to Boeing's intention to fight the complaint, an NLRB attorney wrote
