NLRB overreach: Poster pulldown edition

Help wanted--Occupiers

After a ten-day rest, NLRB overreach has returned.

From The Hill:

Business groups continue to press the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over its proposed rule to have employers post notices informing workers of their organizing rights.

On Monday, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) will present oral arguments in federal court for their lawsuit against the proposed regulation. On a Friday conference call with reporters, Joe Trauger, NAM's vice president of human resources, said the union poster rule is one of many actions the NLRB has taken this year that has angered business.

"This is just one part of what has been an activist agenda that could have a negative impact on employers," Trauger said.

The rule, which was meant to go into effect this November, requires employers to post notices in their workplaces that would inform workers of their right to form unions. After pushback from trade associations, the NLRB delayed implementation of the rule until January next year, so businesses could prepare for the rule.

I won't hold my breath for an NLRB poster rule informing workers of their rights to decertify a union.

I posted this one yesterday in my Occupy Occtrocities entry yesterday, but it deserves a second look:

Red State: SEIU job description: Train and lead members to occupy state buildings and takeover banks

Business Management: 3 new NLRB decisions keep recent pro-union streak alive

From the Sun-Sentinel:

The late author Eric Hoffer, known as "The Longshoreman Philosopher," observed that: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."

If there's any doubt that the cause of labor has morphed into a racket, just look at the Machinists' Union and its goon squad, the National Labor Relations Board.

The Machinists and NLRB may not have used brass knuckles and crowbars against the Boeing Company in their recent labor dispute, but other than that, they sure looked like Lucky Luciano and the New York City dock workers of the 1930s and 1940s.

Real Clear Markets:

The logic of the free market is for companies to pay market wages, earn high profits, and reinvest their earnings in more factories, thus eventually creating industrial jobs for all of the subsistence farmers. Then, as the labor market tightens, market wage levels will rise as employers are forced to compete for scarce labor.

Unions are designed to impede this process. They provide an example of what Bastiat called "What is seen and what is not seen". In the case of the unionization of third world factories, "what is seen" is industrial workers benefiting from higher wages. "What is not seen" is people condemned to subsistence farming because of the factories that were not built with the profits that were not earned or the foreign capital that was not attracted.

The purpose of a union is to extract from its employer more than the market wage. If it doesn't do this, then there is no reason for workers to support it or to pay dues to it. Because companies must sell their output at market prices and pay market returns for the capital that they employ, they cannot afford to pay more than "market" for any major input. Accordingly, any unionized company for which labor is a significant part of its cost structure will eventually be destroyed.

Today's executives know that unionization is the "kiss of death" for their companies. They have no choice other than to resist unionization where possible and to disinvest and flee (whether to Texas or to China) if it occurs. If they don't, they will lose their customers to lower cost producers.

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