Time to End Democrat Majority at the National Labor Relations Board

Trey Kovacs

t has been 173 days since President Obama left office. Yet, he still has a stranglehold on a powerful federal agency, the National Labor Relations Board. Despite President Trump holding the executive office for months, Obama’s appointees to the Board, which governs private-sector labor relations, still have a 2-1 majority of the five-member board, and continue to churn out pro-union decisions.

It is past time to end the excessively pro-union majority at the NLRB. During the Obama administration, the Board overturned a whopping 4,559 years of collective precedent, nearly all of which advantages Big Labor over worker freedom. With two vacant positions at the NLRB, it is imperative that the Senate swiftly confirm new pro-worker members to the agency.

Although it has taken too long, the Senate is starting the process of doing just that today. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee is holding a nominations hearing on the two nominations to the NLRB, Marvin Kaplan and William Emanuel. However, there are a couple more steps that need to be taken in order to confirm the nominees. They must be voted out of the HELP Committee and then be approved by the full Senate. This is urgent business that should be carried out before the Senate takes its August recess.......To Read More.....

Day 6: Obama claimed unlimited recess appointment power in NLRB crisis

By CONN CARROLL | SEPTEMBER 23, 2013 AT 11:14 AM

National Labor Relations Board officials filed a complaint April 20, 2011, against the Boeing Co., seeking to force the aerospace giant to build new 787 Dreamliners in the forced-unionism state of Washington rather than in its new assembly plant in the right-to-work state of South Carolina.

Boeing had sought to build all the Dreamliners near its existing plant in Puget Sound, but the International Association of Machinists refused to agree to a no-strike clause in a new labor contract.  IAM has struck four times since 1989, costing Boeing at least $1.8 billion in revenue.  After a fierce political fight, the NLRB finally dropped its suit on Dec. 9, 2011, but only after Boeing agreed to sign a generous new four-year contract with the IAM, without that sought-after no-strike clause.

President Obama’s appointees on the NLRB had essentially used the power of the federal government to shake down a private company, while also sending a strong signal to all private companies to think twice before creating new jobs in right-to-work states.  Republicans in Congress were livid over Obama’s raw abuse of executive power and vowed to shut down the NLRB….To Read More…..

NLRB General Counsel Nominee’s Union Gave Nearly $1 Million To Lawmakers In June

By: LaborUnionReport (Diary) July 18th, 2013

One day after the constitutionally-challenged NLRB member Richard Griffin was supposedly ousted as part of Senate Republicans’ giving in to Harry Reid’s threat to use the “nuclear option,” Griffin was nominated to become the NLRB’s general counsel. One might wonder, how many were in on the deal before it was made and at what price?

The surprise announcement of Griffin’s new nomination was made on the heels of Barack Obama having nominated, based on the advice of AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka, two new members to the NLRB–one of whom is a recently retired associate general counsel for the AFL-CIO.

As the former general counsel of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Richard Griffin’s union has close ties with NLRB chairman Mark Pearce, whose former Buffalo, NY law firm once had the IOUE as a client.

However, what is more curious is the abnormally high amount of political expenditures the IUOE’s political action committee spent on lawmakers in the month of June.....To ReadMore....

My Take - I think this is a good time to consider getting rid of the NLRB. 

Taking Down Twinkies

Ed Feulner

Twinkies selling for hundreds of dollars on eBay. Union membership dropping steadily over the last decade….. The fate of the popular sponge cake was in the hands of the unionized men and women who work for Hostess Brands.  Or perhaps I should say “worked” -- past tense. Because a union-backed strike has killed what the Great Depression couldn’t……No, the union in question -- the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International -- doesn’t deserve all the blame. Hostess has struggled financially for years, losing $341 million last year alone. But it didn’t have to end this way…….As Heritage labor expert James Sherk points out, this is a major reason why union membership keeps falling. Unions keep losing members as existing unionized firms shrink, and they can’t recruit enough new members to take their place. This year, union membership hit another record low: 11.2 percent. In the private sector, just 6.6 percent of workers belong to a union……The National Labor Relations Board has gotten in on the act as well. “The NLRB just changed its rules to enable unions to cherry-pick who votes in union elections,” Sherk writes. “At one New York department store, unions recently formed a unit representing only women’s shoe associates on the second and fifth floors. None of the 300 other employees in the store got to vote.”  To Read More….

Observations From the Back Row

By Rich Kozlovich

This week’s top ten readers came from the United States, Russia, Slovenia, Germany, Bulgaria, Ukraine, France, Canada, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Thank you for your interest. Here are my picks for the week.  I hope you will find my latest provocation worth your time. Let's begin with;


Mark Levin: You Cannot Have This EPA and a Constitution
Mark Levin says America cannot at the same time have a Constitution and an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that is doing what the EPA is doing today. Levin made the observation in an interview with CNSNews.com about his new book, “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America.” Modern American liberals, who are Utopias, Levin said, aim to erode the separation of powers built into the U.S. Constitution so that a “relative handful of masterminds” can tell everybody else what to do. “This erosion has been going on for about a hundred years,” said Levin. “It’s at a much faster pace right now and there’s a reason for this--because you can’t have constitutionalism and utopianism.”

“You cannot have an EPA and a Constitution at the same time doing what this EPA is doing,” “You cannot have an NLRB deciding who gets to work where, how, and when, and at the same time follow the Constitution,” “You cannot have a tax code that serves basically the purpose of redistributing wealth, which is one of the things that Marx was pushing for so strongly, and at the same time be arguing about limited government and constitutionalism,” “The utopians reject history. Everything begins today,” said Levin. “The models they want to put in place begin today. So why anybody thinks they’re going to respect the Constitution when they don’t respect the rest of history is beyond me.”

JUDICIARY

Court Ruling Broadening Americans with Disabilities Act Will Harm Taxicab Safety and Cost Hundreds of Millions
A federal judge last month barred New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission from issuing permits for taxicabs unless they’re accessible to people who use wheelchairs,” citing the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The judge effectively rewrote the ADA to cover taxi cabs, even though “the ADA specifically exempts automobile-type vehicles, including most taxicabs, from the requirement to be wheelchair accessible.”….The court’s unduly expansive interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is backed by the Obama Justice Department, which filed a brief supporting the lawsuit.