Marathon Pundit: NLRB overreach: Hoffa wants to keep in touch edition

Friday, February 24, 2012

NLRB overreach: Hoffa wants to keep in touch edition

DC bus card, 2009. Hoffa: "Since when is a secret ballot
election a basic tenet of democracy?"

Do you really want James Hoffa, the president of the Teamsters Union, pestering you? If another new overreaching rule is passed by the radicalized National Labor Relations Board, it could happen, Fred Wszolek of the Workforce Fairness Institute says in Townhall.

So, the next handout to union bosses is the personal contact information of workers; their telephone numbers and personal email addresses to be used during organizing campaigns. Imagine, the U.S. Government believes it is entitled to provide Jimmy Hoffa, the general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the telephone numbers and email addresses of workers who want little else than to work hard and enjoy time with their families and loved ones at day's end.

And how does the NLRB view this issue? Simple, it intends to keep its "eye on the prize," according to its new chairman, Mark Pearce, a former union lawyer who will go back to representing unions when his term ends. The Associated Press reports, "One change Pearce wants is requiring businesses to hand over lists of employee phone numbers and emails to union leaders before an election."

This is an unbelievable encroachment on the privacy rights of everyday people and is a gross overreach on the part of the overzealous union proxies masquerading as unbiased government bureaucrats. One could easily argue that the current policy of requiring employers to provide unions with the names and addresses of unit employees already exposes workers to intimidation and coercion. Workers supply their employers with their personal contact information with the expectation that it will be used for the reason it was provided, which more often than not is, to enable the employer to contact the employee or his/her family in the event of an emergency. It is not provided for unwanted disclosure to third parties.

Fortunately, Congress is aware of this issue and working to address it. Recently, Representative Sandy Adams introduced the Keeping Employees' Emails and Phones (KEEP) Secure Act (H.R. 3991). The legislation would add a provision to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) stating, "[i]n no circumstances shall the Board require an employer to provide to the Board or to a labor organization the telephone number or email address of any employee."

As the Occupy Wall Street chant goes, "The people united will never be divided." But wait....from the Daily Caller:

In a twist on typical union activity, employees of the National Labor Relations Board are accusing their bosses of treating them unfairly. NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce and Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon are facing resistance as they attempt to limit the amount of on-the-job time unionized employees can spend on union business, and on attending seminars and other meetings.

On Feb. 16, many NLRB employees attended a seminar at the Cornell Industrial and Labor Relations School in New York City, where NLRB Deputy General Counsel Celeste Mattina was speaking. Outside the meeting room, some in the NLRB Union passed out flyers accusing Pearce and Solomon of "Declar[ing] War on NLRB Employees" in an effort to “destroy their employees' union."

The NLRB's leaders, the flyer claimed, "are demanding an 85% cut in the 'official time' that employees can use when they participate in grievance meetings and arbitration hearings." it also said they want to “unilaterally deny employees the right to attend seminars such as today’s Cornell ILR seminar."

An NLRB Union spokesman told The Daily Caller that organizers are "asking for the status quo" to be maintained. He explained that "we're not under the statute that governs private employees — it's a completely different statute."

As goes Ohio so goes the nation. From Newsmax:

An Ohio group wants a right-to-work amendment on the state's books, just a few months after voters repealed a controversial collective bargaining law. Ohioans for Workplace Freedom said it will gather signatures to have a proposed amendment put before voters, the Dayton Daily News reports.

Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor

A similar law was signed in neighboring Indiana last month, and was the first right-to-work law signed in the Rust Belt, whose workers are traditionally represented by unions. Supporters of right-to-work laws say the legislation frees employers from restrictive wage scales and could lead to more jobs.

Michigan? Yes, Michigan. From MLive:

Graduate student research assistants would be unable to join unions under a bill that cleared the state Senate Wednesday backed by the Republican majority.

The bill, which was approved in committee only the day before, now heads to the state House.

Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe, said the intention was "to uphold the faculty-student relationship. These students are students. The faculty serves as mentors to these students as they pursue advanced degrees. All we're saying is, 'Geeze, students are students, just like they always have been.'"