Politics

NLRB, labor unions face heat in Congress, from employers for ‘corporate campaigns’ and scare tactics

Matthew Boyle Investigative Reporter
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Employers and industry organizations are pushing back on labor unions’ increased use of pressure and scare tactics in efforts to organize workers and bolster their ranks. They’re also pushing Congress to try to stop the unions from “manipulating” the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for their own political agendas. The NLRB has faced extensive criticism from business organizations and companies in recent months for appearing to side with and promote the agenda of Big Labor instead of acting as a neutral arbiter in negotiations.

House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline, Minnesota Republican, said the NLRB is imbalanced in favor of businesses with Republican presidents and tilts towards Big Labor when Democrats control the White House. Kline thinks the Obama administration has shifted the NLRB much further left than previous Democrats ever have before, though.

“Typically, when it’s a Republican administration, Democrats claim that workers’ rights are being denied,” Kline said during an Education and Workforce subcommittee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) hearing on Thursday. “When it’s a Democrat’s administration, Republicans [do similar things.] When it’s a Republican administration, Democrats call for hearings on board members and I’ve complained about it. And, now, with this administration, I think we have an outrageous overreach of the Board.”

The scare tactics unions use, dubbed “corporate campaigns,” are when they try to organize workforces by getting employers to sign “neutrality agreements,” which are basically gag orders and legal promises that force an employer to allow organizers on their property to attempt to unionize workers without any company say at all. If companies don’t sign the neutrality agreements, unions will often hold large banners outside their businesses, show up at workers’ homes after hours, attempt to discredit a company’s products or services and try, essentially, to smear the business’s reputation until it signs the agreement.

Republican Sens. Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee introduced Senate legislation, the Job Protection Act, they say would, among other things, stop or slow down Big Labor’s corporate campaigns.

Also, The Daily Caller has exclusively learned that the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW), a group of more than 500 organizations, wrote to DeMint, Graham and Alexander expressing their concerns with “increasing threats to the basic tenets of free enterprise” and issuing their support for the Job Protection Act introduced a couple weeks ago. Eighty-one national organizations, including industry associations across most of the entire private sector, and 120 state and local organizations signed onto the letter. The letter points out that unions’ corporate campaigns and other tactics have become a backdoor form of “card check,” since the Employee Free Choice Act failed to pass during the last Congress. Card check is when union organizers tell workers signing the cards indicates they’re in favor of having an election, which is true, but when organizers get enough cards signed, they can forgo a union election.

“Politically powerful labor unions, other EFCA supporters, and their allies in government are not backing down, however,” the CDW wrote to DeMint, Graham and Alexander. “Having failed to achieve their goals through legislation, they are now manipulating the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to promote ‘card check,’ a key component of EFCA, and other radical anti-business policies. The NLRB’s actions are fueling economic uncertainty and have serious negative ramifications for millions of employers, U.S. workers they have hired or would like to hire, and consumers.”