NLRB overreach: Snap will break edition

Pat Quinn is very unpopular

The radicalized-NLRB's ruling on snap elections could break the recovery. In other news I have quite a bit of right-to-work news, a petition you should sign, and the pro-union governor of Illinois is very unpopular here.

From the Heritage Foundation's Foundry Blog:

A new National Labor Relations Board regulation that expedites elections for union representation will likely lead to dramatically higher rates of unionization, a new study has found.

A majority of workplace union elections are decided by five or fewer votes, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis. What's more, "cutting the time between a request for an election and the ballot increases the chances union supporters will prevail," according to the study. "Unions win 87 percent of elections held 11 to 15 days after a request, a rate that falls to 58 percent when the vote takes place after 36 to 40 days, according to the researchers."

The 11 to 15 day timeframe is very close to what the new NLRB rule is expected to achieve. According to Heritage labor policy expert James Sherk, the "snap elections" rule will trim the time between an election request and the election itself to 10 to 21 days, a significant drop from the current average of 31 days.

"If a broader set of elections were to occur more quickly," wrote Bloomberg analysts Jason Arvelo and Ian Hathaway, "the likely outcome would be more organizing drives, a higher success rate for unions and ultimately more union membership."

Which will lead to a sluggish economy.

The Workforce Fairness Institute want you to sign a petition on WhiteHouse.gov: Adhere to the Constitution of the United States of America by Rescinding his 'Recess' Appointments to the NLRB.

About those recess appointments--from the Marshall County Tribune:

In a speech to the U.S. Senate, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said 47 Republican senators insist on a full debate challenging President Obama's appointments in January.

"If the President's actions were to stand as a precedent, the Senate may very well find that, when it takes a break for lunch and comes back, the country has a new Supreme Court Justice," Alexander said.

The President "has shown disregard" for Senate's power of advice and consent of executive and judicial nominations as outlined in the Constitution, he said in a speech inspired by his recent visit to Mt. Vernon.

Right-to-work news from the Fiscal Times:

Last week, Indiana became the 23rd state in the US to adopt right-to-work laws that prohibit closed shops and mandatory union-dues fees in workplaces. The change was notable for two reasons. First, it had been more than a decade since any state adopted right-to-work laws. But more importantly, Indiana is the first rust belt state – where manufacturing provided most of the economy and unions controlled large portions of the labor force – to pass such laws.

Few doubt that Indiana needs some changes to boost its economic development. At the time of the law's passage, Indiana ranked 38th in employment with a 9 percent jobless rate. Their ranking for per capita income had fallen from 33rd in 2000 to 42nd in 2010, and their state rankings for 10-, 20-, and 30-year improvement in per-capita income range from 45th to 48th. Only Georgia, Nevada, and Michigan did worse on the 10-year measure.

Governor Mitch Daniels and the Republicans in the state legislature decided to address this by making the state regulatory climate more amenable to business, especially manufacturing, through the right-to-work effort. Indiana already passed union reform in its public sector a few years earlier, before Governor Scott Walker offered a slightly milder version of public-employee union reform and touched off a political firestorm in Wisconsin, another former manufacturing powerhouse.

In both cases, unions fought hard to maintain their grip on power. They tried to shut down the government in Wisconsin to block Walker’s PEU reforms, and then launched a series of recall efforts to retake control of the legislature and attempt to reverse the law.

More RTW news from the West Virginia Record:

The state Chamber of Commerce is behind state Sen. Karen Facemyer's proposal to make West Virginia a right-to-work state.

In a release Feb. 7, state Chamber President Steve Roberts said his group thinks "all ideas are worthy of consideration and shouldn't be dismissed just because some critics attempt to shout them down."

"Everyone should understand the labor unions that oppose this concept are in lock-step with Barack Obama, and support his policies -- just as they did with the failed Obama stimulus package," Roberts said. "West Virginia should be open to those ideas that could be potential job creators."

Being a right-to-work state means a worker can't be forced to join and pay dues to a union as a condition of employment. Twenty-three states and the federal government currently have some type of right-to-work law. Indiana became the 23rd state just last week.

AP on New Hampshire:

New Hampshire legislation curtailing union powers that Democratic Gov. John Lynch squelched last year resurfaced Thursday in revised form at a legislative committee hearing.

Supporters and opponents once again lined up on the issue of collective bargaining during the meeting of the House Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services Committee.

Rep. Will Smith, R-New Castle and the bill's sponsor, said the revised legislation was "clearer" and would be more acceptable to the legislature. He denied accusations that he was pushing a "union-busting bill."

"This is not an anti-union bill. It's a pro union-member bill," Smith said as the largely union audience laughed.

As goes Ohio...from the Columbus Dispatch:

A group seeking to bring a November statewide vote to make Ohio a "right-to-work" state got the OK to circulate its petition yesterday.

The final green light came from the Ohio Ballot Board, which ruled that the proposed constitutional amendment is a single issue.

A total of 385,253 valid signatures of registered Ohio voters is needed to put the measure on the ballot. The vote would come a year after Ohioans resoundingly defeated Senate Bill 5, which would have slashed collective-bargaining rights for state and local government workers.

Those circulating the petition also must get enough signatures — equivalent to 5 percent of the total vote in the 2010 gubernatorial election — from at least 44 of the state’s 88 counties.

Back in my state, our hyper-pro-union governor has problems. From the Chicago Tribune: Quinn still unpopular in Illinois, Tribune poll finds

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