Marathon Pundit: NLRB overreach, rogue edition

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

NLRB overreach, rogue edition

After a brief respite, the NLRB overreach summary is back.

Businessweek looks at the rogue agency:

The National Labor Relations Board's acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, broke the law by intentionally withholding documents about Boeing Co., Representative Darrel Issa said. "Your continued personal obstruction, lack of compliance with a validly issued congressional subpoena and false statements to the committee are unacceptable," Issa said today in a letter to Solomon. "The NLRB is acting as a rogue agency that believes it does not have to fully answer to Congress." Issa, a California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, requested that six NLRB employees submit to transcribed interviews for his investigative panel.

Here's what Issa is speaking about. From the Wall Street Journal:

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa accused the National Labor Relations Board of another misstep in the agency's complaint against Boeing Co., this time alleging it deliberately withheld documents from the committee to hide potentially damaging email exchanges between NLRB staffers.

As evidence, Mr. Issa, a California Republican, cited documents that Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog organization, recently obtained from the NLRB through a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents included emails "that demonstrate the lack of impartiality of the NLRB" in the Boeing complaint, Mr. Issa said in a letter sent Monday to NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon. For example, in one email that contained a union press release praising the case, an NLRB attorney proclaimed: "[h]ooray for the red, white and blue," Mr. Issa said in his letter.

Mr. Issa expressed frustration that the committee has obtained only some of the documents it requested from the NLRB several months ago as part of its probe into the Boeing complaint. The committee has repeatedly asked the NLRB for all documents and communications related to the case, and the agency has repeatedly responded that providing certain documents could undermine a fair trial for litigants.

Mr. Issa told Mr. Solomon that the documents provided to Judicial Watch — but not to the committee — "reveal that you and your colleagues misled the committee and intentionally tried to conceal communications between you and NLRB board members" about the case.

Even union households are turning against the NLRB. From the Washington Examiner:

A new survey has found surprisingly strong support among union households for radically reforming the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and for requiring greater transparency by union leaders on their personal finances, as well as their management of union spending.

The Juneau Empire is aghast about the overreach:

So it strains belief that the unconfirmed acting general counsel of an obscure regulatory agency wants to stop Boeing Co. from using its newly built aircraft manufacturing plant in South Carolina.

But it's happening. The National Labor Relations Board's main mission is to settle disputes between employers and labor unions. Its acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon — nominated by President Barack Obama in January but as yet unconfirmed by the Senate — has charged that Boeing's decision to expand production of its 787 Dreamliner in its new Charleston plant was made in retaliation for prior strikes at its Everett, Wash., plant.

Solomon's charge was brought after a complaint from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), which represents Boeing employees in Washington state. Hearings began last June before an NLRB judge.

If the NLRB decides in the union's favor, American unemployment will be permanently higher than otherwise. More American manufacturing plants will locate overseas. Fewer foreign firms will invest here.