Marathon Pundit: NLRB overreach--new victim edition

Monday, July 25, 2011

NLRB overreach--new victim edition

The NLRB has a new victim.

From ABC News:

Another high-profile company is coming under the scrutiny of the National Labor Relations Board after a union in California filed a complaint last week against German car manufacturer BMW.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 495 union said BMW is violating labor laws by planning not to renew the contracts of 100 workers at its Ontario, Calif., distribution warehouse and instead outsource the work to a logistics company.

The NLRB has come under fire recently for a case involving airplane manufacturer Boeing. The NLRB said Boeing "retaliated" against unionized employees at its Washington assembly plant when it moved part of the construction for its Dreamliner 787 jet to a newly built plant in South Carolina, a state without heavy union representation.

The issue has caught the attention of Republicans in Congress, who claim the NLRB has overstepped its authority and tried to dictate private business decisions.

The Washington Post:

Law firms and trade associations are fighting a proposed change to federal labor law that calls for stricter reporting requirements for companies and the lawyers they retain for advice on bargaining, strikes and union elections.

The proposal, introduced by the Labor Department last month, deals with what’s called the "persuader activity" rule, in Section 203 of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act. Under the current law, employers and outside labor consultants — including law firms — do not have to report legal advice attorneys give employers as long as lawyers don’t communicate directly with workers to persuade them about their rights not to unionize.

The proposed rule would change that, requiring companies and law firms to publicly disclose a wide range of legal work done for company managers if it’s used to persuade workers on union activity — as well as how much law firms are getting paid for it.

That could include drafting speeches, reviewing election documents, advising strategy, holding training sessions for managers on union organizing, and creating fliers or pamphlets for employers.

The Hill:

The Obama administration's push to mend its relationship with business has gone cold only six months into the effort.

Complaints abound about the regulations pouring out of federal agencies to implement the federal healthcare and financial regulation laws.

There's also fear that labor-friendly policies emerging from the National Labor Relations Board and tax-reform legislation expected in 2012 will further hold back growth.

"With the Obama administration, it just seems to be relentless," said David Rhoa, owner of a bulk-mailing facility based in Kalamazoo, Mich. "I've become accustomed to the fact that this pummeling keeps coming."

Billionaire and Obama-backer Penny Pritzker made a hot day hotter in Chicago last week. From Red State:

According to blogger Mike Klonsky, when faced with a one-day strike, Pritzkers' Hyatt opted to put turn the heat on the union and its sympathizers:

It was already approaching 100° at 8 a.m. when I arrived at the Park Hyatt where, after 22 months of stalled negotiations, hotel workers were staging a one-day picket to protest the hotel chain’s intolerable treatment of their housekeeping staff.

In case you didn't know, Hyatt is owned by the Pritzker family. Heiress Penny Sue Pritzker chairs Obama's national campaign finance committee. She is also big player in Democratic Party politics as well as in the world of anti-union, corporate school reform and was recently appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to a seat on the Chicago school board.

Pritzker's response to the Park Hyatt strikers was to turn on the hotel's powerful heating lamps to try and bake the workers into submission on this brutally hot day.

Klonsky is a pal of Bill Ayers.

More hotel news. From Investor's Business Daily:

Business: Las Vegas CEO Steve Wynn drew attention for a boardroom rant denouncing the intolerable business climate fostered by the White House. He's hardly the first. What's happening is emblematic of a bigger problem.

In a Monday conference call, the casino magnate credited with revitalizing Las Vegas blasted President Obama, declaring him "the greatest wet blanket to business, progress and job creation in my lifetime."

The blast was remarkable for two reasons: Wynn has been a staunch supporter of the Obama administration from the beginning and still considers himself a Democrat. But even more remarkable, it's been out of character for CEOs such as Wynn to express their views in such blunt terms on political matters.

"A lot of people don't want to say that," he said. "They'll say, 'Oh God, don't be attacking Obama.' Well, this is Obama's deal, and it's Obama that's responsible for this fear in America," said Wynn. "The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution, and maybe 'we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest or (are) holding too much money.' We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists."

Writing for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, former NLRB board member J. Robert Brame.

In a Delphic-like statement, former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine simultaneously claims to support the "existing law that a company can open, locate or relocate where it wants" and contends that the "courts" should decide the National Labor Relations Board acting general counsel's demand that Boeing abandon its almost $2 billion facility in South Carolina.

The demand is not based on "existing law," and waiting as long as a decade for resolution by the courts has enormous, harmful consequences — not only to Boeing but to Southern workers and American industry in general. Now is the time for our leaders, like Kaine, to take a stand against this restriction on American businesses.

A little more than 10 years ago, a highly partisan NLRB general counsel made a similar attempt to expand the law. In that case, a union decided not to strike but instead to use an "inside game," whereby workers would do only the exact tasks required by the collective-bargaining agreement. For example, instead of taking the utility's trucks home so they could respond promptly to emergencies, the utility's linemen left them at their work station. As a result, they could no longer respond quickly to families and consumers who had lost power or encountered dangerous downed power lines.

The company protested and made clear its displeasure, and when the union continued, it locked out the employees. That is, it sent the workers home without work and without pay.

The Charleston Daily Mail:

The Obama administration is noticeably laggard about pursuing economic growth. But it has been dogged about pursuing policies to reward its political supporters from organized labor.

Unions contended, for example, that secret ballots were unnecessary — that unions should be able to organize workplaces by getting signatures on cards.

That didn't fly.

Now the National Labor Relations Board proposes to cut to as few as 10 days the time between a union filing for an election and the time a vote is held.

The Washington Post:

National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) Vice President John Borsos: "SEIU has been promoting itself an as advocate for labor law reform and workers, and against coercion and intimidation, but no institution has done more to coerce and thwart workers about which union they want to join."

Bloomberg: