Marathon Pundit: NLRB overreach, Labor Day weekend edition

Friday, September 02, 2011

NLRB overreach, Labor Day weekend edition

Labor Day is Monday, but in the Obama administration, every day is Labor Day.

In what Gallup says is a new high, 55 percent of Americans are predicting the power of the labor movement will weaken.

Big Government:

Until recently, union bosses—not elected representatives—have been in control of the government employee compensation process. Using taxpayer dollars they obtain through mandatory dues, they elect the management they later negotiate with. However, across the country in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan, taxpayers are fighting back and the tide of Big Labor control is starting to change.

Now there is a new online tool to give taxpayers and policy makers critical information on which states favor Big Labor. The Competitive Enterprise Institute and Crossroads GPS recently launched a "Big Labor versus Taxpayer Index" that analyzes 1,150 labor laws and regulations throughout the country and exposes states that make coddling Big Labor a top priority.

For the first time ever, government union members outnumbered those in the private sector in 2009. These unions are at the forefront of the movement for more expansive and expensive government. They use collected forced dues to lobby for greater pay, lavish benefits and more members. They also have a legal monopoly over public services and, if they strike, can deprive citizens of essential services such as education and safety.

The result is a vicious circle. Politicians cater to government unions, and these unions in turn support these politicians' election campaigns. Once these pro-Big Labor candidates are elected, they can provide the increased pay and benefits to government employees that is demanded by their unions. The unions then collect dues from their members, which enables them to give more political support to friendly politicians, and the cycle goes on.

National Review Online:

The National Labor Relations Board's recent rule requiring virtually every employer in America to post a notice describing its employees' rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is reflective of two disturbing trends at the NLRB: first, a myopic and partisan focus on increasing unionization by whatever means, including bold exercises of authority not within the agency's statutory mandate; and second, a concomitant disregard of protected employee rights to refrain from union activity.

Under the new rule — enacted just a few weeks after the NLRB proposed to radically shorten the time it takes to conduct secret-ballot elections for union representation, so as to limit employers' right to express their views about unionization to their employees — an estimated 6 million employers will be required to post a notice in every workplace. Further, if the board finds that an employer’s failure to post the notice was "knowing and willful," this fact may be deemed presumptive evidence of an "unfair labor practice," or violation of the NLRA.

To see how this could play out in practice, take for example an employer who disciplines a worker for repeatedly violating a rule. If the worker claims the discipline was imposed because he or she is a union member, and if the employer failed to post the notice, the board can find a discriminatory motive for the discipline. In effect, this would require the employer to prove its innocence, rather than the agency to prove the discipline was actually discriminatory.

In addition, an employer's failure to post the notice could stop the clock on the statute of limitations for employees to file charges under the NLRA, even though the law imposes a six-month limitation period.

The fundamental problem with the new rule is that the board lacks the statutory authority to impose it. As the lone Republican board member, Brian Hayes, wrote in his dissent, quoting from an eloquent Supreme Court decision: "Agencies may play the sorcerer's apprentice but not the sorcerer himself."

Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Steven Huntley:

In another job, with another employer, at another time many years ago, I was a union activist. I edited a union newspaper, recruited new members and promoted the union whenever I could. Then I became its grievance chairman.

For 2½ years I spent 95 percent of my union-work time defending the incompetents, the lazy, the malingers and the malcontents. And they got paid the same as my fellow workers who showed up every day and gave their all to the job. What's more, I saw how union rules frustrated management innovations to improve our journalistic product.

A few years later I moved on to another journalistic enterprise without a union. I saw merit pay raises given to the hard workers, no salary hikes to those who didn’t or couldn't do the job, and eventual dismissal of anyone who couldn’t measure up to the demands of the magazine. Thus began my journey from liberal to conservative.

That's not the story you'd expect to hear as we approach the day designated to celebrate the labor movement. And labor does have a great history of men and women risking their jobs and their lives to redress deplorable working conditions, capricious and arbitrary pay scales, and exploitative employers.