Marathon Pundit: Daily Caller: House GOP wants to slash NLRB budget

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Daily Caller: House GOP wants to slash NLRB budget

Rep. John Kline (R-MN)

Using a recess appointment because Senate confirmation would have been difficult, President Obama appointed radical labor lawyer and union card check proponent Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board last spring.
In a roundabout way, the federal balance of power could finally be working, as The Daily Caller tells us:

House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline, Minnesota Republican, is particularly concerned with some of the NLRB's recent pro-union agenda, The Daily Caller has learned, and will take that into special consideration when it comes to what’s going to get cut from the budget in the near future. Education and Workforce's subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions will conduct a hearing on Friday on "emerging trends" at the NLRB, which TheDC has learned will likely feature a broad discussion of the NLRB’s alleged power grabs.

Education and Workforce committee spokesman Brian Newell said Kline is worried about how the NLRB's recent actions will affect workers and that the NRLB budget is on the table when it comes to budget cuts.

"Chairman Kline has pledged to take a look at every dollar being spent at the federal level and that certainly includes money spent at the NLRB," Newell said in an e-mail to TheDC. "The chairman is also very concerned about some recent actions taken by the NLRB and their impact on workers. Moving forward, all options are on the table when it comes to protecting the rights of workers."

One of the concerns Kline and other top Republicans have with the NLRB is that the historically politically neutralboard is shifting into the advocacy realm. One thing the board is considering is shrinking the time period in which workers can educate themselves beforevoting in a union election. The board might also allow electronic union elections, which U.S. Chamber of Commerce labor specialist Glenn Spencer said is "cyber card check." Card check is when labor organizers get workers to sign a card that, in most cases, counts as a vote in favor of unionization. They get workers to sign the cards by telling them a certain percentage need to be signed for a unionization vote to take place, but when organizers get enough signed cards, they can forgo a vote altogether.