Marathon Pundit: NLRB overreach, Obama jobs speech edition

Thursday, September 08, 2011

NLRB overreach, Obama jobs speech edition

Tonight President Obama will make his vaunted jobs speech. One way to add jobs is to dump the NLRB.

From CBS 5 Charleston:

As President Barack Obama puts the final touches on his jobs speech for Thursday night, Gov. Nikki Haley has a sticking point she wants him to address.

"The only thing I want to hear from him and the only thing the people of this country want to hear from him is that he's going to disband the National Labor Relations Board," said Gov. Haley."Or get them to step down from attacking a great American company that chose business in South Carolina as opposed|to going overseas."

Haley's talking about Boeing's decision to build a plant in North Charleston and the lawsuit the NLRB filed against the airline manufacturing company.

The NLRB claims Boeing violated labor laws by moving a new production line for its 787 airplane from Washington state to South Carolina.

The Daily Caller:

To permanently eliminate the National Labor Relations Board, South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy recommends transferring its responsibilities to the Department of Justice.

Congress created the NLRB to enforce the National Labor Relations Act, but many conservatives this year have expressed support for dismantling the board because of its pro-union tendencies.

"We can do with the NLRA what we do with most other federal statutes, which is let the Department of Justice enforce it," Gowdy, who was a federal prosecutor before running for public office, told The Daily Caller. "Why do you need an NLRB?"

Gowdy said the NLRB's litigation is going to "wind up" in the federal court system anyways, so he questions the necessity of the board.

The Detroit News asks Michigan business leaders how to add jobs. Big Government on Obama's "imperial presidency":

President Barack Obama's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is on a job-killing rampage. It's claiming unprecedented powers far beyond what federal law allows. Taken with Obama's other agencies, these executive actions paint a picture of what has become an imperial presidency.

A federal appeal is certain once NLRB’s shocking attack on Boeing Co. goes through the administrative process. In a free-market society, government bureaucrats cannot dictate to a private company where they can and cannot open factories or create jobs. Boeing—whose general counsel was formerly one of the most brilliant federal judges in America, Michael Luttig—should win this court battle.

NLRB’s power grab is not limited to Boeing. It's also claiming jurisdiction over St. Xavier University, saying that the school doesn't qualify for the religious exemption to NLRB's authority because St. Xavier is not Catholic enough. NLRB cites to a 1979 Supreme Court case as giving it this authority, when that case instead makes clear that this government agency would be running afoul of the First Amendment by presuming to rate the religiosity of bone fide church organizations.

Just recently NLRB came down with three other far-left decisions. One was repealing an earlier NLRB ruling, stripping workers of the right to promptly contest the results of a vote to form a union. Another was ruling that employers everywhere must post signs on forming a union, giving the appearance that unionizing was encouraged both by the government and even the employer.

Once again, the Detroit News:

The National Labor Relations Board wants nearly all private employers to display workplace posters informing their workers of their rights under federal law to form a labor union, and how to go about it.

Aside from questioning a federal board that's supposed to be an impartial arbiter between unions and employers, there's a big problem with the order: The NLRB doesn't appear to have the authority to make such a demand of private businesses.

The board is empowered to act only at the request of a union petition or an unfair labor practice allegation. There was neither in the case of the posters.

It appears to be a capricious act on the part of the NLRB, which is obviously concerned about the plunging membership of private-sector unions, which now stands at below 7 percent of the work force.