Marathon Pundit: NLRB overreach: Rand Paul edition

Middlesboro, Kentucky

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) wants to challenge President Obama's illegal recess appointments.

From Politico:

Sen. Rand Paul is joining a legal challenge to President Barack Obama's recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.

The Kentucky Republican appears to be the first sitting senator to legally object to the Jan. 4 appointments that drew fire from congressional Republicans, who say the president overstepped constitutional boundaries by installing three members to the labor board and Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

"With the recent recess appointments, President Obama has circumvented our Constitution and showed complete disregard for the separation of powers," Paul said in a statement Tuesday. "He has demonstrated once again that he is willing to treat the office of the presidency like a dictatorship."

Paul said he plans to file a friend-of-the-court brief backing legal action by the National Federation for Independent Business and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. The groups filed court claims on Jan. 13 arguing that the NLRB appointments are unconstitutional.

Writing for The Hill, the Workforce Fairness Institutes's Fred Wszolek:

Over the course of the last three years, President Obama has waged a rhetorical campaign against special interests and their influence in Washington DC, while at the same time spearheading an effort to deliver unprecedented giveaways to his largest and most influential campaign contributor, labor bosses.

The heads of unions have been the most frequent visitors to the White House and they have openly bragged about having access to administration officials every day of the week, including weekends. They have also candidly spoken about using administrative agencies full of unelected bureaucrats to create policies that they have been unable to move forward in the Congress due to their lack of popularity with workers and business owners.

At every step of the way, this president has ceded to big labor's demands and sacrificed the interests of employees and employers as he travels the country extoling the importance of job creation and economic growth. For those who feel deep uncertainty about the state of the nation’s economy or threatened by the edicts handed down by the National Labor Relations Board, the administration's conduct has been breathtaking from two perspectives, the breadth of its hypocrisy and outright resentment for the business sector.

That ultimately leaves job creators with few places to turn outside Congress and the courts. With respect to the latter, business groups such as the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Coalition for a Democratic Workplace and National Federation of Independent Businesses have already sought to challenge the legality of the recent non-recess appointments of Richard Griffin and Sharon Block to the National Labor Relations Board made by President Obama while the Congress was still convening regularly and even though the nominees had only been named weeks prior. Secondly, as Obama's labor board issues decisions on matters, there will be additional legal challenges questioning the constitutional authority of board members who were placed on the National Labor Relations Board despite the fact the Congress had not recessed.

Pittsburgh Tribune Review:

Piling outrage upon outrage, the National Labor Relations Board is operating with new members appointed unconstitutionally -- and trying to tilt the playing field even further in Big Labor's favor.

President Obama flouted separation of powers by making "recess" appointments to the NLRB while the Senate -- where Republicans had vowed to block new NLRB appointees -- was not in recess.

"We presume the constitutionality of the president's appointments, and we go forward based on that understanding," says Mark Pearce, NLRB chairman and -- surprise! -- union lawyer.

The NLRB's already hastened workplace elections, denying employers sufficient time to educate employees. Now, Mr. Pearce wants employers facing workplace elections to give unions not just employees' names and addresses -- as has long been required -- but their home phone numbers and e-mail addresses, too.

Later today Indiana will become the nation's 23rd right-to-work state. Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe writes about RTW:

Most Americans regard compulsory unionism as unconscionable. In a new Rasmussen survey, 74 percent of likely voters say non-union workers should not have to pay dues against their will. Once upon a time, labor movement giants like Samuel Gompers, a founder of the American Federation of Labor, agreed. "I want to urge devotion to the fundamentals of human liberty - the principles of voluntarism," declared Gompers in his last speech to the AFL in 1924. "No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion."

But far from rejecting compulsion, Big Labor now fights tooth and nail to defend it. And no wonder: Unions have long since squandered the affection of the American public. In the years right after World War II, more than one-third of the US workforce was unionized; now the union membership rate is just 11.8 percent, and most of those members are government employees. In the productive economy, Americans continue to flee from organized labor. Last year only 6.9 percent of workers at private companies belonged to unions.

So as a matter of by-any-means-necessary expediency, it is easy to understand why Big Labor long ago embraced what liberal scholar Robert Reich (later Bill Clinton's secretary of labor) dubbed "the necessity for coercion." In order “to maintain themselves," Reich said in 1985, “unions have got to have some ability to strap their members to the mast." Or, as Don Corleone might have put it, to make them an offer they can't refuse.

But is there any ethical reason - any honorable basis - for the union shop?

After decades of domination by Big Labor, Michigan is taking a new path.

From the Detroit News:

A House committee on Tuesday passed a package of labor reform bills blasted by critics as anti-union measures.

The legislation would add county and municipal employees to the law that prohibits public school teachers from striking and set steep fines for public sector strikes and lockouts.

Michigan's Upper Peninsula

The bills also would make it easier for employers to get an injunction to stop picketing and require employers to get annual permission from employees to deduct union dues from their paychecks.

The package approved by the House Oversight, Reform and Ethics Committee, chaired by Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, would have to be passed by the full House and Senate and be signed into law by Gov. Rick Snyder.

Here's a rarity--a victory over red tape at the federal level.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture withdrew a proposal to change its procurement contracts after business groups raised concerns it would increase their labor headaches.

The groups said the proposed change would have unfairly required businesses with USDA contracts to certify that their subcontractors and suppliers are in compliance with labor laws, a mandate they called a burdensome and impossible task that runs counter to President Barack Obama's vow to curb excess regulation.

A spokesman for the USDA, which spends billions of dollars annually to procure such things as commodities for its school lunch and international food aid programs, said Tuesday that the agency has decided against making the new rule effective on Feb. 29 as originally proposed.

Instead, the USDA said it is reviewing complaints received about its idea from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, among other trade groups. The USDA didn't rule out resubmitting a revised version of the proposal at a later date.

Good tidings from Virginia via the Washington Times:

The Virginia House and Senate on Tuesday voted to ban mandatory project labor agreements on state-funded construction projects, a move proponents argue will help protect the state’s right-to-work laws and create a level playing field in contract bidding.

The Republican-led House approved its version of the bill on a 69-27 vote, and the Senate deadlocked on the measure 20-20.

Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a Republican, cast the tiebreaking vote in favor of the legislation — his first tiebreaking vote on legislation this session. He also cast a tiebreaking vote to organize the Senate last month.

"Public dollars should not be diverted to projects involving Project Labor Agreements that favor union shops over merit shops," Mr. Bolling said in a statement. "This critical legislation protects our right-to-work law and continues to promote a pro-business environment."

The NLRB had a double dipper. But now he's headed to prison.

The Washington Post:

At a time when people are having trouble finding even one job, Jeffrey K. Armstrong of South Riding, Va. was able to find two full-time jobs — one at the United Nations in New York and another at the National Labor Relations Board here in Washington.

Armstrong, sentenced Friday to 18 months in federal prison for his fraudulent endeavors, managed to snag a job in 2008 as the U.N. assistant chief of the Security and Safety Service, “responsible for all physical security at U.N. facilities,” the Justice Department said. That paid about $160,000 a year.

Then in February 2009, after almost a year at the United Nations, he got a second job here at the NLRB as a chief of security within the division of administration. That paid about $121,000. (That’s some serious double-dipping.)

Armstrong somehow "dissuaded" NLRB officials from contacting his U.N. supervisor and filed for medical leave at the United Nations even though he was working at the NLRB, the Justice Department said.