Posts Tagged ‘NLRB’
“e-Voting” Could Be Too Similar To Card Check
One of the issues that has been raised as it’s been discovered that the National Labor Relations Board has issued a request for cost estimates of a system that would allow employees to use electronic ballots in union-representation elections is whether the process will open employees to intimidation in the same way as the card check provision of the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act.
Keith Bogardus of the The Hill, who has been tracking this issue for years, ran an article yesterday examining employer concerns. The piece highlighted a letter by the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, of which Associated Builders and Contractors is a member:
“Among other adverse impacts, using electronic means to permit off-site, or remote, voting during union organizing elections will subject employees to a level of intimidation and coercion that does not occur during an on-site, private ballot election that is directly supervised by the NLRB,” the coalition said in the letter. “Electronic voting bears a striking resemblance to the card-check scheme.”
Full letter here.
Refuse 2 Recuse
Check out LaborUnionReport’s post at RedState: SEIU’s Becker Wrongly Splits Hairs on His Refusal to Recuse Himself on SEIU cases
Card Check Is Heavy, So Is it On To EFCA Lite?
LRIonline has found documents showing the National Labor Relations Board is looking into the workability of electronic voting system and concludes: “Make no mistake. If unions can’t get rid of the current election process through legislation, they will rely on the NLRB to do it for them.”
As we noted earlier today, union officials aren’t done throwing their money around. In many respects, they’re just getting started. So even if card check took a public blow with positive election results in Arkansas, EFCA 1.5 is still a major threat to keep an eye on.
Card Check King Accused of Recusal Backtrack
LaborUnionReport.com is helping lead the charge against card check-by-fiat and its personification, National Labor Relations Board member Craig Becker. The site points out that Becker is backtracking on an important promise he made to recuse himself from cases involving his former employer, the highly powerful Service Employee International Union.
Now Shopfloor’s Carter Wood is adding two very valuable cents, pointing out that Becker’s ethics pledge looked like swiss cheese, opining: “Well, if you’re going to blow through your ethics pledge, might as well be audacious about it. But Becker shouldn’t expect to be confirmed by the Senate via unanimous consent for a full term on the board.”
Hot Off The (PR)resses
It appears the impact of recess-appointed Craig Becker on the National Labor Relations Board may be having subtle but important and negative effects on employers and employees, or at least that’s one of several plausible conclusions to be drawn after reading some great investigatory work by Chamberpost.com’s Brad Peck.
He did some digging and found out that the NLRB is now essentially doing public relations work for unions, putting out notices of union-won elections (which, of course, greatly undercuts the argument for the sinisterly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act). What Peck found was that the PR work was a significant break from the past, when the Board remained neutral, as one would expect given the wording and spirit of the National Labor Relations Act. This left him to conclude:
Unions and some Board folks have in the past cherry picked a few words out of the 1935 policy declaration in the Wagner Act that it is the policy of the US to “encourage” collective bargaining – as if the 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments were never enacted. This may be the line of thought justifying the new issuance of releases trumpeting employees choosing a union, while not issuing similar releases heralding the rejection of a union — but the NLRB should be proud whenever a fair election is conducted, whatever the results.
With fair elections resulting in employees choosing representation becoming the norm, one wonders whether those who want Craig Becker and the other members in the majority on the board to change the rules for elections understand that these results undermine their position.
We don’t need a skewed NLRB any more than we need card check. Both are bad for employees, employers, and the overall health of our economy.
Photo courtesy of:
Card Check and NLRB: Raw Deal or New Deal?
Among the continuing reaction to news of the president’s ill-advised recess appointment of union attorney Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board comes from none other than a former Member of that board.
We tracked down John Raudabaugh, formerly of the NLRB and now of Nixon Peabody, with a question we’d received about the president’s departure from the standard practice of appointing members from both parties. Here’s what Mr. Raudabaugh offered:
“The NLRB is now 3 to 1. On August 27, it will be 3 to 0. Not since the New Deal and first six years of the NLRB, 1935-1941, has the Board been all Democrats or all from one party. Labor law reform followed in 1947 to balance the scales. Is the past to be prologue”
It’s hard to beat the expertise of someone’s who has sat in that very chair. And so many historical parallels one could get into …
UPDATE: More reaction coming in … The US Chamber adds 50 cases to keep an eye on and warns employers to be on red alert.
UPDATE(d) UPDATE: Thanks to BigGovernment.com readers for joining us! Also se more from Rob Bluey of Heritage, who writes: “The appearance of preferential treatment hasn’t stopped Obama from rewarding his allies at SEIU. Stern was picked in February to serve on Obama’s debt commission. Burger was tapped for Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board in 2009. And now Becker, despite Senate opposition, has secured a coveted appointment to represent the Big Labor’s interests at the NLRB.”
UPDATE to the third power: Keith Smith at Shopfloor.org asks the important question: Now what?
