NLRB overreach, hurry-up edition

Boeing HQ, Chicago

Time is running out for NLRB overreach, so the radicals are playing "hurry-up" while they conduct their war on prosperity.

From the Wall Street Journal--paid subscription required:

The National Labor Relations Board is hurrying to push through a raft of decisions by year's end, when a pair of vacant board seats could leave an important part of the agency hobbled indefinitely.

At the same time, congressional Republicans and business groups, unhappy with recent NLRB enforcement and rule-making initiatives, are signaling that they will try to block any new board nominees President Barack Obama might put forward.

"I'm going to create a high bar for any future nominees," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said in an interview. "Given its recent activity," Mr. Graham said, "inoperable is progress."

When Chairman Wilma Liebman's term expires Aug. 27, the NLRB will have just three members on its board—two Democrats and one Republican. That is the minimum number needed to make major new rules. The board would shrink to two when Democrat Craig Becker's term expires Dec. 31, unless Mr. Obama fills one or both of the vacancies before then.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal

President Barack Obama offered a national pep talk Monday, the first business day after Standard & Poor's dubbed the debt-ceiling deal a tepid attempt at fiscal restraint and responded by downgrading the federal government's bond rating,

"Markets will rise and fall," the president said, "but this is the United States of America. No matter what some agency may say, we have always been and always will be a Triple-A country. For all of the challenges that we face, we continue to have the best universities, some of the most productive workers, and the most innovative companies and the most adventurous entrepreneurs on earth.

"More...

And where is Barack Obama? Is he riding to the rescue of this "innovative company" and its "adventurous entrepreneurs"? Of course not. The president, according to The Associated Press, says the case was brought by an independent federal agency and he's reluctant to interfere.

And for all those people lining up for the new jobs in South Carolina? There's always food stamps.

Human Events:

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) continue to work in tandem to punish The Boeing Company—for opening a second production line where management wanted it but the union did not.

In April, the acting general counsel of the NLRB, Lafe Solomon, complied with the IAM's request to issue an unprecedented complaint requiring Boeing to produce all of its 787 Dreamliner aircraft at its unionized facility in Washington State. When the complaint was filed—a full 13 months after the union filed its charge—Boeing had already invested more than $750 million in the facility in Charleston, S.C., and hired more than 1,000 workers. The complaint alleged that Boeing's decision was retaliatory because some of the company's senior executives said the decision was made partly to avoid the economic consequences of future strikes at the company's facility in Washington State.

More...

Many Democrats in Congress have expressed opposition to congressional inquiries into the Boeing complaint and the unusual circumstances surrounding its filing. But if they look closely and objectively both at existing law and how the acting general counsel is prosecuting the case, they will understand why Congress is asking such good questions—and deserves answers.

Technorati tags: SEIU labor unions organized laborDemocrats Obama business nlrb south carolina business Boeing aviation jobs craig becker