Marathon Pundit: NLRB overreach report, pushback edition

Pushback began in the House yesterday.

From The Hill:

Republicans on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce approved legislation Thursday that would limit the authority of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The committee marked up the bill and advanced it on a party-line vote of 23-16.

Republicans have been attacking the labor board ever since it issued a complaint on April 20 that accused Boeing of retaliating against union workers.

Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), the committee’s chairman, said the action against Boeing could make other companies think twice about investing in the United States.

Foster's Daily Democrat:

As anyone on either side of an effort to unionize workers will tell you, it is a complex and complicated process — one where federal law requires many T's to be crossed, I's dotted and the time to do just that in order to ensure everyone involved is treated fairly.

At first blush then it would seem a mystery as to why the National Labor Relations Board recently voted, 3-1, to speed the process up.

The proposal would shorten the window between the time a business is notified of unionization efforts and the vote to unionize.

Currently it takes approximately 45-60 days to organize and hold a vote to unionize (in 2008 it averaged 57 days, based on NLRB numbers). According to the lone dissenting member of the NLRB, the proposed change could mean a vote in as little as 10-20 days.

National Review Online:

Consider the typical union-campaign scenario: The union spends six to eight months gathering authorization cards from employees at a targeted facility. During that time, the union conveys its message regarding the benefits of unionization with few constraints. The employer, meanwhile, is completely oblivious to the fact that an organizational campaign is underway.

The employee population hears a one-sided, unrebutted story from the union organizers, and frequently an inaccurate one. The employees won't hear about the downsides of unionization. They may not hear about union dues, fines, and assessments. They won't hear about the union’s political or social agenda, with which many of the employees may not agree. They won't hear about unionized companies that have become uncompetitive and are struggling or have gone out of business.

The union decides when to file an election petition with the NLRB, which will also determine the approximate date of the election. This is the first time most employers are even aware that a union campaign is under way — and the election is a mere five and a half weeks away.

It takes most employers two weeks just to formulate their own campaign strategy in response. Consequently, were the proposed rules implemented, the election would occur before the employer has even figured out what it wants or needs to say to its employees regarding the particular union and unionization in general. For those of us who've been involved in hundreds of organizational campaigns, it's difficult to conceive of how a union couldn't win an election under such circumstances.