Marathon Pundit: New week, more NLRB overreach

SEIU protester, Skokie, IL

More NLRB overreach. First from the Washington Examiner:

Long before the federal government's unprecedented attack on Boeing began, President Obama's National Labor Relations Board launched itself on a crash course with our country's economic recovery.

The first step came in the nomination of Craig Becker, and, as he pushes the federal government into uncharted territory to bail out Big Labor during Monday's NLRB hearing, we are reminded why nominations matter for public policy.

Few Americans have heard of Becker but many have heard of one of his former employers, the Service Employees International Union. It is widely viewed as the most aggressive private-sector union. It used member dues to become a primary bankroller of the president's 2008 election campaign, as well as those of many Democrats in Congress.

All SEIU and their Big Labor brethren have asked of Obama and the Democrats in return for their financial consideration is, simply, everything. Their first opportunity for political payback was the legislative version of card check, the inaptly named Employee Free Choice Act that would have abolished the secret ballot in workplace representation elections.

From Townhall:

In just another example of the Obama administration making law by fiat, the National Labor Relations Board head Craig Becker is proposing new rules that would shotgun the formation of new union shops in as quick as ten days.

After the defeat of card check at the legislative ballot box, the former SEIU goon is acting creatively in order to implement portions of card check unilaterally.

What would one expect from a guy appointed to his position despite his nomination being rejected by the Senate?

"He never satisfactorily answered a series of questions that I posed to him – failing to reassure me that his years of service to labor unions would not color his decisions at the NLRB," Senator Orrin Hatch (R.,UT) said in a statement as reported by the Washington Post.

The Charleston Regional Business Journal:

The National Labor Relations Board and House Oversight Committee continue to haggle about documentation requested by the committee for its investigation of the NLRB complaint against the Boeing Co.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the NLRB has withheld some requested documentation because of its ongoing investigation and hearings in the case.

Issa, the committee chairman, spoke about the case during a Wednesday interview on Fox News.

He also sent the NLRB a letter on Tuesday about the requested documentation. In the letter, Issa notes the NLRB gave the committee some case documents on May 27 and June 29. But those documents don't comply with the "entirety of the request," Issa wrote.

Bloomberg:

Speeding labor elections would deny companies a fair chance of persuading workers to reject organized representation, employers will tell U.S. regulators.

The National Labor Relations Board, which investigates unfair-labor practices, is considering adoption of steps sought by unions that would lead to quicker votes. More than 60 speakers are scheduled to testify at a board hearing on the proposed rule today and tomorrow.

The proposal is "designed to deprive employers of representation," Charles Cohen, an attorney at Morgan Lewis and Bockius LLP, said in testimony prepared for the hearing. He represents the Washington-based Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, which calls itself an alliance of workers and employers opposed to federal legislation making unionization easier,

Faster union elections would be a win for organized labor, which has lost fights this year to stop Republican governors from curbing public-employee unions in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio.

Rules...rules...and more rules. Once again, from the Washington Examiner:

On Monday, Obama issued an executive order asking independent agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the National Labor Relations Board to evaluate the costs and benefits of their regulations. This follows a similar executive order made to Cabinet agencies in January.

But the president's spring regulatory agenda contains 4,257 proposed rules, up from 4,225 proposed rules in the fall, and 3,943 this time last year. On the one hand, Obama asks for simplification. On the other hand, his agencies spew paperwork requirements.

Take one small set of Labor Department rules from the Office of Federal Contract Compliance governing rules on federal contractors. This small office has jurisdiction over 26 million workers, about 22 percent of the civilian work force.

One proposed rule, titled "Affirmative Action and Nondiscrimination Obligations of Contractors and Subcontractors Regarding Protected Veterans," takes up 67 pages in the Federal Register. Not single- or double-spaced pages, but pages with three columns of dense type.

In an op-ed for the Charlotte Observer, Frank Dowd IV writes about the president's war on business:

With this president, the rhetoric rarely matches the reality. I've learned to watch what he does, not what he says. He touted manufacturing as a key to America's economic success during a recent campaign trip to Iowa, saying "innovation and adaptation will help the manufacturing sector and the entire U.S. economy rebound." If that is so, why is his National Labor Relations Board suing Boeing for creating jobs in South Carolina (a right-to-work state) to manufacture their innovative Dreamliner aircraft, many of which will be exported? I agree with the president that we need to encourage more exports from the U.S. because exports help with employment in this country and also help with our staggering balance of trade deficit. The NLRB attack on Boeing is an audacious attempt to impose wage controls by dictating where and how a company can conduct business. If the NLRB gets its way, 1,000 S.C. workers will be forced into the unemployment lines.

The president is also attempting to influence the use of private aircraft. He mentioned "CEOs and their corporate jets" on at least six occasions in a recent speech as an example of a group that should be paying more in taxes. But the corporate jet tax break that he wants to eliminate was authorized by his own stimulus package in 2009. Back then, the president championed his proposal to accelerate depreciation schedules "to allow businesses and investors to deduct immediately the full cost of most investments that will help businesses expand and hire."

But in his recent press conference, Mr. Obama taunted Republicans, saying "You go talk to your constituents and ask them, are they willing to compromise their kids' safety so that some corporate jet owner continues to get a tax break?" A tax break that, by the way, every Republican House member and all but three Republican senators voted against. Amid this sluggish economy, what would motivate the president to attack an American industry that employs 1.2 million people and generates $150 billion in revenues each year? Most companies relying on a business airplane are small and mid-size firms flying into towns with little or no commercial airline service - not "fat cat" Wall Street types. Does he even understand the industry he is disparaging?

The Washington Times:

In the past decade, unions have become increasingly desperate to obtain new dues-paying members. An example of how desperate can be found in a 70-plus-page intimidation manual from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which only recently came to light in a pending court case.

The new union tactic is to use pressure on corporate boardrooms as a means of organizing entire companies nationwide rather than recruiting workers on a site-by-site basis; in short, to organize employers rather than employees. To create this pressure, unions attempt to push businesses to the edge of bankruptcy, with little regard for the welfare of employer and employee. They attempt to strong-arm businesses into agreeing to take away the secret ballot for employees in union-organizing elections via card check. They also try to force employers to restrict their own speech on union issues so that workers will not get both sides of the story on unionization. Among the SEIU's demands is that employers agree to bargain only with it, to the exclusion of all other unions, regardless of what workers want.

SEIU is in federal court defending itself against charges of racketeering and extortion filed by one of its unionizing targets, the catering company Sodexo Inc. Sodexo's court discovery recently revealed an SEIU "Contract Campaign Manual" on "Pressuring the Employer." Union pressure is nothing new, but what SEIU recommends is not limited to organizing drives and strikes. Rather, the pressure takes the form of a so-called corporate campaign, whereby the union allies itself with outside third parties to raise intimidation to a new level.

SEIU's manual details how “outside pressure can involve jeopardizing relationships between the employer and lenders, investors, stockholders, customers, clients, patients, tenants, politicians, or others on whom the employer depends for funds." The union advises using legal and regulatory pressure to "threaten the employer with costly action by government agencies or the courts."