NLRB overreach report, stealth card check edition

The overreach continues And guess what is back? Union card check. From Big Government:

Outgoing NLRB Chair Wilma Liebman and the of the Obama Appointed NLRB Board members, Craig Becker & Mark Pearce, voted to eliminate secret ballot election protections. Now, when employers make secrets deals with a union bosses agreeing to recognize a union without allowing his employees a secret ballot vote; employees no longer have the right to force an NLRB secret ballot election and allow workers to decide if they want the union or not.

Unable to pass EFCA, Card Check Forced Unionism, through a Democrat-controlled congress, Obama is paying off Big Labor through his handpicked NLRB Board. He is doing all this at the expense of worker freedoms and worker paychecks. And, the NLRB Decision is applied retroactively to bar even elections that have already been held but not counted.



Employees can now be forced to pay for an undisclosed arrangement between employers and labor union bosses without having the right to put it to a secret ballot election.

From the Daily Caller:

House Education and Workforce committee chairman Rep. John Kline demanded Tuesday that President Barack Obama stop the National Labor Relations Board from moving forward with a pro-union agenda.

In response to three controversial new rulings the NLRB announced late Tuesday, Kline said Obama can "no longer stand idle as his labor board wreaks havoc on the nation's workforce."

"With more than 14 million Americans unemployed, it is past time the president denounce the job-destroying actions of the NLRB and begin working with Congress on responsible policies that will put our nation's workers and job-creators first," Kline said in a statement.

With the three rulings, Kline said the NLRB "unloaded a barrage of bureaucratic activism that will devastate employees and job creators."

SHOT:

Solis: Obama Has Been Focused On Jobs

CHASER:

Obama Labor Boss Buys Canadian-Built Car

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis Says Her SUV Is Made In America. Nope, Canada.The New York Times:

The National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday released a decision that would make it easier to unionize nursing home workers.

It is the latest in a flurry of moves favorable to unions that the board completed before the term of its chairwoman, Wilma B. Liebman, expired on Sunday. The board released two other pro-union decisions on Tuesday, both reversing decisions issued under President George W. Bush.

In the nursing home decision, the board ruled that the union, the United Steelworkers, could organize just the 53 certified nursing assistants at a nursing home in Mobile, Ala., as part of one bargaining unit, without including the home's 33 other nonprofessional workers, including janitors, cooks and file clerks.

Groups representing businesses and nursing home operators attacked the decision, fearing it would make the homes more vulnerable to unionization drives.

From Open Markets:

Earlier this year, President Obama proudly touted his executive order calling for federal agencies to review regulations on their books and identify obsolete rules for repeal.

That was a welcome gesture, but unfortunately it seems to have remained just that. In the case of labor policy, the administration is taking the opposite approach.

The Obama administration seems to be throwing every pro-union measure at the wall to see what sticks, in order to give union bosses something — anything — to keep them on board for the 2012 elections.

And finally, from the Wall Street Journal, paid registration required:

Nothing like the end of a week in August with a hurricane on the way to bury another political favor for unions. When not telling U.S. companies where they are allowed to locate their operations, the National Labor Relations Board will now require them to display pro-organizing propaganda.

The new rule issued last Thursday requires management to post notices about employee rights to unionize, collectively bargain and strike under the National Labor Relations Act. The NLRB believes that workers are not familiar enough with that 76-year-old law "and therefore cannot effectively exercise those rights." The ostensible basis for that conclusion is "the comparatively small percentage of private sector employees who are represented by unions."

Talk about post-hoc reasoning. The NLRB seems to believe that it must promote unions because the percentage of private sector workers in unions—6.9% today, down from a 1954 peak of 35%—is too low. What would the "comparatively" correct share be? At any rate, an 11 by 17 inch broadside "in such colors and type size and style as the Board shall prescribe" is unlikely to reverse this downward trend, which is largely the result of union effects on business competitiveness and long-term job security.

The NLRB will design and distribute the notices—is Shepard Fairey, the man who did those 2008 "Hope" posters, available?—so the direct costs could be de minimis, though of course they will fall disproportionately on businesses that lack the legal departments to parse a 194-page regulation about posters in the workplace.

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