The unconstitutionally appointed National Labor Relations Board announced its upcoming agenda that includes forcing companies to release private information about their employees — including their phone numbers and email addresses — to union activists to assist their efforts to coerce workers into a union.
On February 2, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff
On February 2, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff
Right to Work stalwart Sen. Rand Paul is joining National Right To Work legal challenge of President Obama’s illegal recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Politico reports:
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.
On January 24, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff
The Heritage Foundation has discovered that financial disclosure documents from President Obama’s illegal appointees to the National Labor Relations Board “show that one will continue to receive payments from a major labor union during his time on the board.”
From Heritage:
Richard Griffin, the former general counsel for the International Union of Operating Engineers, will receive regular payments under two different IUOE pension plans. The payment amounts are not listed on the disclosure form. He will also receive a single lump sum payment equal to three weeks of salary (one week for each of the three years since he enrolled in the plan). Griffin’s annual salary as the IUOE’s general counsel was $376,778, according to the disclosure form.
In his capacity as general counsel, we have noted, Griffin advanced policies that helped insulate corrupt union leaders from challenge.
Both Griffin and Sharon Block, who was also illegally appointed to the NLRB, filed ethics agreements with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics stating that they will not, in their capacity as NLRB members, participate in matters that might affect their personal finances. Assuming that agreement is adhered to, Griffin’s continued compensation by the IUOE is licit.
On January 23, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff
Hotel Officials, Union Bosses Hit With Multiple Federal Labor Board Charges for Abusive Organizing Tactics
Union organizers verbally abuse Marriott employees and spy on workers in changing rooms after striking backroom deal with company officials
New York, NY (January 19, 2012) – A group of New York City Marriott (NYSE: MAR) employees – acting on behalf of their coworkers – have filed federal charges against the company and a local union for workplace intimidation and harassment.
The three SoHo Marriott employees filed the charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys.
New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council Local 6 union organizers entered into a backroom deal with company officials that allows union organizers unfettered access to the employees in order to install a union in the workplace.
Abusing this privilege, union organizers are attempting to browbeat the workers into supporting the union through a prolonged campaign of intimidation and harassment. Meanwhile, company officials deny workers’ attempts to meet on company grounds.
Union officials have used video cameras in employee changing rooms, accessed employee lockers and handled employees’ personal possessions, and have even resorted to verbal abuse. Union officials even took photographs of a female employee without her consent while she was changing her uniform in an employee changing room. (more…)
On January 13, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff
From The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation press relase:
Worker Advocate Challenges Constitutionality of Obama’s Controversial Labor Board Recess Appointments
Case over controversial NLRB posting becomes first legal challenge to Presidential attempt to make “recess appointments” without actual recess of the Senate
Washington, DC (January 13, 2012) – Today, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys filed a motion in federal court challenging the legality of President Barack Obama’s recent purported recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The legal challenge is part of a larger case attacking controversial new NLRB rules that require every employer to post incomplete information about employee rights online and in the workplace, even if they’ve never violated or been accused of breaking federal law. The NLRB’s posting rules do not require union officials to issue information about workers’ rights to refrain from union membership or opt out of union dues. Currently employers can only be required to post notices if the Board has ruled that a violation of labor law occurred.
The Foundation’s case has been consolidated with other legal challenges to the biased NLRB notice posting rules brought by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW), and two small businesses. Those parties filed the joint motion today raising the issue of the NLRB’s lack of authority to implement the rule given the unprecedented recess appointments.
The new filings in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia case comes after NLRB lawyers notified the court that President Obama’s recent recess appointees were now parties in the ongoing legal battle. Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s New Process Steel decision, the NLRB needs three members to act. However three of the five current NLRB members were installed by unilateral Presidential appointment earlier this year, despite the fact that the Senate was not in a self-declared recess.
In the motion papers, Foundation attorneys argue that the controversial appointees to the Board are not legitimate because the U.S. Senate is still in session per the body’s rules, so there was no “recess” for the President to make appointments without Senate confirmation. Therefore the NLRB lacks the necessary quorum to implement the new posting rules. Foundation attorneys are asking the judge to rule on the constitutionality of the three recess appointees.
“President Barack Obama has already shown time and again that he is willing to abuse his executive authority to force more workers into union-dues-paying ranks,” said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Now Obama’s executive abuse jeopardizes the constitutional balance our country holds very dear, all in the name of paying back his Big Labor benefactors.”
The implementation of the NLRB’s new posting rules, originally supposed to be in August of last year, has been twice delayed due to the legal challenge in the Foundation’s case. The rules are currently scheduled to be effective on April 30, 2012.
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is also a party in the case, but is not party to the Foundation’s motion.
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, is assisting thousands of employees in nearly 200 cases nationwide. Its web address is www.nrtw.org.
On January 7, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff
The former head of the National Labor Relations Board Peter Schaumber is letting the world know that President Obama was willing to shred the Constitution and make “recess appointments” while Congress was in session in order to please the union bosses.
On January 5, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff
Roger Pilon, a constitutional scholar from the CATO Institute, makes a compelling case that President Obama’s outrageous appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are unconstitutional:
All of Obama’s appointments yesterday are illegal under the Constitution. And, in addition, as too little noted by the media, his appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is legally futile. Under the plain language of the Dodd-Frank Act that created the CFPB, Cordray will have no authority whatsoever.
Yesterday, Professors John Yoo and Richard Epstein, writing separately, made it crystal clear that the president, under Article II, section 2, may make temporary recess appointments, but only when the Senate is in recess. Add in Article I, section 5, and it’s plain that the Senate is presently not in recess, just as it wasn’t under Senate Democrats when George W. Bush wanted to make recess appointments. The difference here is that Bush respected those constitutional provisions while Obama — never a constitutional law professor but only a part-time instructor – ignores them as politically inconvenient. Attempts by Obama’s apologists to say the Senate is not in session are pure sophistry and, in the case of Harry Reid, rank hypocrisy, as this morning’s Wall Street Journal brings out.
But clear beyond the slightest doubt is the language of the statute (itself unconstitutional on any number of grounds not relevant here). As my colleague Mark Calabria wrote yesterday, “authorities under the Act remain with the Treasury Secretary until the Director is ‘confirmed by the Senate.’” A recess appointment, even if it were constitutional, is not a Senate confirmation. There is simply no wiggle room in that language that gives Cordray any authority, as litigation will soon make plain. (more…)
On January 5, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff
From the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation:
Worker Rights Advocate Blasts Obama’s Unprecedented Recess Appointments to the NLRB
The President’s legally dubious NLRB recess appointments pave the way for another year of forced-unionism giveaways
Washington, DC (January 4, 2012) – Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, issued the following statement in response to President Obama’s unprecedented NLRB recess appointments:
“Obama’s recess appointments to the NLRB, despite there being no formal recess of Congress, show just how much this Administration is in the pocket of Big Labor. In the last two years the Obama Labor Board has repeatedly enacted one power grab after another on behalf of union bosses, to the detriment of the rights of individual employees – especially those who wish to refrain from union activities. The President’s legally dubious NLRB recess appointments pave the way for another year of forced-unionism giveaways.
“Union bosses know their coercive agenda is overwhelmingly unpopular with the American people, which is why they’ve turned to unelected administrative agencies like the NLRB to push through much of what they cannot get through Congress. That’s what makes these appointments all the more offensive in the face of Congress affirmatively taking action to block recess nominations.”
National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys are already exploring possible legal challenges to these unprecedented recess appointments in defiance of Congress.