Marathon Pundit: NLRB overreach: Union class warfare edition

Workers, rise up against your union!

The best friend rank-and-file union members ever had was President Bush's Labor Secretary, Elaine Chao. Clearly, the Obama administration sides with the union bosses. In fact, within this chosen caste of his, President Obama is fostering class warfare within unions. The White House is allowing Big Labor to use shorter, less revealing--and presumably less damaging to the unions--financial disclosure forms on how the big shots spend their members' dues money.

Oh, do you think union workers will rise up against the union bosses?

From Bloomberg:

The form for reporting a union's finances will be two pages, down from nine in effect since 2007 under President George W. Bush, the Labor Department said today in a statement. The Obama administration proposed a shorter form in 2009 after unions said the reporting process was too intrusive, time consuming and burdensome.

Under the rule, union shop stewards aren’t required to file a form, and loans with credit institutions will be exempt from disclosure.

The U.S. required unions to report finances starting in the 1950s as a way to fight corruption and curb embezzlement by labor leaders.

Financial corruption has bedeviled unions for decades, and included the 1967 jailing of Jimmy Hoffa, who was president of the 2.5 million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters, on fraud and bribery charges. Hoffa disappeared.

From The Hill:

Rick Perry targeted the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday as he unveiled his economic plan in South Carolina.

The NLRB has filed a complaint against Boeing for launching a new plant in Charleston, S.C. It accuses the airplane manufacturer of locating in South Carolina instead of near its existing facilities in Seattle in retaliation for strikes by union members in Washington.

The issue has become a rallying point for Republicans, particularly in South Carolina, and Perry joined the GOP chorus of opposition in his speech in Greenville, S.C.

"When federal agencies like the NLRB are dictating to companies where they can create jobs and where they cannot, they have overstepped their bounds and undermined our free-market system," he said in remarks prepared for delivery at the ISO Poly Films company in Greenville.

From BigLaborBailout:

Union bosses said they expected payback when they spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2008 and 2010 elections, and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has certainly done its part to give it to them. "Quickie" or "ambush" elections, "micro-units," and other efforts at forced unionization have been coming from the NLRB over the past two years. Some in Congress have said, "enough!" and are considering legislation to stop the NLRB's Big Labor bailout.

The bill under consideration was introduced by Rep. John Kline. H.R. 3094, the Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act, and puts the brakes on the NLRB’s pro-union boss agenda. The Congressmen supporting this legislation are tired of the NLRB rewriting labor law and are trying to reassert Congress’s authority to set the rules governing the nation’s workplaces. Let’s hope they succeed.

While there are many ways the NLRB is carrying water for Big Labor, two actions by this rogue agency prompted the Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act: the proposal for "quickie" elections and the decision that allowed "micro-units." While labor bosses applauded these actions, workers and small businesses beseeched Congress to do something to stop the union lackeys at the NLRB.

The legislation would give employees and employers more time to respond to union-organizing drives. Instead of only a few days to react, employers would get 14 days to get counsel and prepare a case for an NLRB pre-election hearing. And instead of rushing into an election and being forced to decide after only 10 days, as the NLRB wants, workers would have at least 35 days to make this important choice under the Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act.

From the GOHP Blog: Unions Hire Researcher With A Taste For Being Paid Off.

From Doug Ross in regards to Gov. Kasich's public-sector union collective bargaining reform law: Urgent Action Alert for Ohio!

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