Marathon Pundit: NLRB overreach, Wisconsin edition

Big Labor tried to take control of the Wisconsin state Senate. They failed. From Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post:

A whole lot of Democrats had told us that the Wisconsin state senate recall elections were going to be a sign of the power of organized labor. It was going to tell the nation just how Wisconsin voter felt about his move to take away certain collective bargaining rights from the public employee unions (who had organized massive protests). And the Democrats can't claim they lacked resources. As Chris Cillizza reported: "The recalls have essentially been special elections on steroids, with spending reaching nearly $30 million. As of a couple weeks ago, about two-thirds of that has gone to benefit Democrats, and Republicans acknowledge that they were essentially caught flat-footed by the whole thing."

From the Post's The Fix blog:

It's the second major electoral setback for organized labor in the last two years; unions spent millions to knock off Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln in a 2010 Democratic primary but came up short.

"The unmistakable lesson is that every time labor makes it about labor, they lose," said one senior Democratic strategist granted anonymity to speak candidly. "It's a messenger problem."

There's little debate that labor's share of the electorate has dipped in recent elections.

In 2010, just 17 percent of the electorate said they were a member of a union household. Two years earlier — in a presidential race that elected a Democratic president — the union household number stood at 21 percent, the lowest it had been in any presidential election dating back to 1972. (The peak of labor's share of the electorate was in 1976 when 34 percent of voters were members of a union household.)

From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

By subpoenaing documents from the National Labor Relations Board's lawsuit against Boeing Co., Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is appropriately pressuring the Democrat-dominated NLRB, which is intolerably pressuring businesses' freedom to locate where they wish.

The NLRB contends Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner production line in right-to-work South Carolina violates labor laws, labeling its location as retaliation against organized labor for past strikes at Boeing's Washington state facilities. Boeing says it chose South Carolina for valid economic reasons.

Rep. Issa is right: The NLRB lawsuit does interfere with Boeing's ability to decide where it does business. What's worse is the precedent that would be set if the lawsuit succeeds, which would enable government to usurp all U.S. companies' right to decide -- for themselves -- where they do business.

That no doubt would please the anti-business Obama administration, its Big Labor backers and their NLRB minions. But this insidious form of top-down, centrally planned, leftist industrial policy would lead to economic catastrophe.

Didn't President Obama promise that he "paint the nation purple with SEIU?" He did.

From AP:

One of the largest private sector union elections in U.S. history is headed for a do-over.

Labor regulators say about 43,000 California health care workers at Kaiser Permanente will decide once again whether to stay with the giant Service Employees International Union or leave for a much smaller rival.

Last year, workers voted 61 percent to 39 percent to remain with the SEIU. But a judge at the National Labor Relations Board ruled last month that the election was tainted. The judge found the SEIU led workers to believe they would not get the same raises and benefits if they joined the rival National Union of Healthcare Workers.

Two of President Obama's most destructive recess appointments were NLRB general counsel Lafe Solomon and board member Craig Becker, a former SEIU attorney. The House is preventing such appointments although Congress is essentially in recess.

From the Washington Times:

To C-SPAN viewers, Tuesday's House session opened just like any other: A Republican took the chair to gavel in the session, the dais was full of staffers and the chaplain opened with an invocation commemorating the chamber's page program.

But expand the camera angle a bit, and the scene is anything but business as usual.

The floor is bereft of other members of the House, the public viewing galleries are almost empty, and Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina soon taps the gavel again, closing shop without a single bit of business transpiring. Total time in session: four minutes.

Welcome to pro forma session — the abbreviated meetings that House Republicans have scheduled twice a week for the rest of August, while members of Congress are on summer recess. An obscure constitutional provision also means the Senate must convene regularly throughout the summer. Because the two chambers are in session, President Obama has no chance to make recess appointments of controversial nominees.

The Hill:

Rep. Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) said on Tuesday that the best way the Obama administration could help create jobs is to have President Obama instruct all agencies to pull back all pending regulations.

"The best thing that Congress and the administration could do is to say, 'hey look, we're going to do everything we can to make sure that we're not inhibiting economic growth,' " Quayle told ABC 15 in Arizona.

"The president has the ability to just call up the heads of each one of those agencies and say, 'you know what, let's stop what you're doing right now, hold off, until we could have some economy recovery,' because right now, you're having a real negative impact on economic growth and job creation," he added.

Quayle said the National Labor Relations Board decision to try to stop Boeing from opening a new plant in South Carolina is an example of a "bad regulation," since it is stopping a U.S. company from creating U.S. jobs.

The Birmingham News:

An attempt by the National Labor Relations Board to prevent Boeing Co. from building a new airplane at a non-union factory in South Carolina could have ramifications for Alabama, panelists at an economic development conference said this morning.

The NLRB and labor unions allege in a complaint that Boeing's decision to move production of its 787 Dreamliner to a $750 million plant in South Carolina represents a blatant attempt to avoid the unions at its operations in Washington state. The work force at the South Carolina plant, which was unionized under a previous manufacturer, voted to decertify after Boeing took ownership.

Marcel Debruge, a partner with the Burr & Forman law firm, said the legal challenge is unusual becaus of what the NLRB and labor unions are seeking -- a forced move of production of the airplane back to Washington.

Debruge said if the NLRB and labor unions are successful, repercussions for other right-to-work states could be significant as companies from open union states could find it less tempting to establish operations elsewhere. In a right-to-work state no worker can be forced to join a union.

Writing for the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Rep. John Mica (R-FL):

The Washington Post's commentary put an interesting liberal slant on an interview conducted with me on the eve of Senate Democrats ending their two-week partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration.

The writer mischaracterized my measured comments and decision to avoid personal vitriolic attacks, such as those Senate Democrats recently launched against me and other House Republicans, and came to a twisted conclusion that I was a "beaten man."

In response to being asked if I was surprised by the magnitude of the reaction to the FAA extension that I had sent to the U.S. Senate, my answer was "yes."

Who would have ventured to guess that Senate Democrats would have partially closed down the FAA for two weeks and, as the Post column correctly reports, demagogue the issue? What the writer failed to mention is that the leverage language included in the House extension was not to end rural air service subsidies, but to stop the federal underwriting of passenger tickets at three airports where taxpayers shell out from $1,350 to over $3,700 per ticket.