NRTW files first legal challenge against Obama’s Unconstitutional NLRB scheme

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.

 

 

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Posted in: Big Labor Payback, Forced-Dues for Politics, NLRB, Obama Administration, Personnel Alert
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Fred Barnes “Is there anything Obama won’t do for unions?”

On June 26, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

 

Former murdered Mineworkers International presidential candidate “Jock” Yoblonski’s campaign manager and Weekly Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes reminds us that Obama has created more Big Labor Boss paybacks than just the NLRB v. Boeing case.

Besides the Obama National Labor Relations Board’s assault on Boeing’s South Carolina employees and workers in Right To Work states in general, Barnes mentions the recent new regulations proposed by DOL to hamper employees getting to hear both sides of the story during union organizing campaigns.

But, the main focus of the article is the Obama Administration’s repeated attempts to overturn multiple defeats of unions to organize DELTA airlines. If you want to get more outraged at the Obama administration for its continuous assaults on free enterprise and individual employee choices, then read Barnes’ America’s Labor Party, Is there anything Obama won’t do for unions? Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite:

How far will President Obama go to advance the interests of organized labor? Awfully far. We know this not only from the effort to keep Boeing from building a plane in a right-to-work state, South Carolina, but also from the way Delta Airlines is being railroaded into recognizing unions its employees have repeatedly rejected. (more…)

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Posted in: Bailouts to Unions, Big Labor Payback, DOL, Government Grants to Unions, Intimidation Tactics, National Mediation Board (NMB), NLRB, Obama Administration, Organizing, Political Activity, Right to Work, Right To Work States, State Right To Work
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President Obama: Union Owned and Operated

On June 23, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer has hit the nail on the head — the president is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Labor:

In this year’s State of the Union address,[President Obama] proclaimed a national goal of doubling exports by 2014.

One obvious way to increase exports is through free-trade agreements. But unions don’t like them. No surprise then that for two years Obama has been sitting on three free-trade agreements — with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea — already negotiated by his predecessor.

Nothing new here. In 2009, Obama pushed through a federally run, questionably legal bankruptcy for the auto companies that robbed first-in-line creditors in order to bail out the United Auto Workers. Elsewhere, Delta Air Lines workers have voted four times to reject unionization. A federal agency, naturally, is investigating and, notes economist Irwin Stelzer, can order still another election in the hope that it yields the answer Obama’s campaign team wants.

But Democratic fealty to unions does not stop there. Boeing has just completed a production facility in South Carolina for its new 787 Dreamliner. Why? Because by choosing right-to-work South Carolina, Boeing is accused of retaliating against its unionized Washington State workers for previous strikes.

It jeopardizes the economic recovery, not only targeting America’s single largest exporter in its attempt to compete with Airbus for a huge global market, but also threatening any other company that might think of expanding in any way displeasing to unions and their NLRB patrons. (more…)

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Posted in: Bailouts to Unions, Big Labor Payback, Economic Development in RTW States, Economic Impact of Unionization, Economics, Elections, Exclusive Representation, Forced Dues, Forced-Dues for Politics, Government Grants to Unions, Intimidation Tactics, Legislation, Monopoly Bargaining, NLRB, Obama Administration, Political Activity, Right to Work, Right To Work States, South Carolina, Union boss power, Wisconsin
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Right To Work = Jobs

On May 20, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

BMW plans to expand in Right To Work state of South Carolina

As politicians are seeking jobs through stimulus programs, spending sprees, welfare, food stamp programs and bureaucratic mandates, many ignore the upshot enactment of a Right to Work law can have on job creation for fear of angering their big labor benefactors. But the evidence continues to compound that giving workers a choice in joining a union is not only a civil rights issue but an economic growth issue. The Washington Examiner gets it:

“Danaher’s closing,” said Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., lamenting the loss of a plant that had employed 330 people in his state. “Now those jobs are going to Arkansas and to Texas.”

It was April 2005. Neal was taking the opportunity during a House committee hearing on competition with China to complain instead about how Massachusetts was losing jobs to states with less-hostile business climates.

The Ways and Means Committee chairman in 2005, California Republican Bill Thomas, mildly rebuked Neal’s deviation from the topic, saying Massachusetts had shot itself in the foot with high taxes and compulsory union membership.

“At some point perhaps the good citizens of Massachusetts will pick up the drift,” Thomas said. (more…)

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Posted in: Bailouts to Unions, Big Labor Payback, Economic Development in RTW States, Economic Impact of Unionization, Economics, Forced-Dues for Politics, Government Grants to Unions, Legislation, Massachusetts, NLRB, Obama Administration, Political Activity, Right to Work, Right To Work States, South Carolina
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Turning the Tables on Tom Harkin

On May 17, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

Union water-carrier Sen. Tom Harkin (D-AFL-CIO) held a hearing last week in the Senate to promote more forced unionism but the Republican minority turned tables on the Chairman.

Sen. Mike Enzi called one witness — Michael Luttig, the general counsel of Boeing who spoke at length about the NLRB’s war on freedom of choice and Right to Work.

Pajamas Media reported:

Luttig, the general emphasized that a union strike in 2008 in Washington shut down production of the 787, costing Boeing more than a billion dollars and “damaging Boeing’s reputation for reliability with its airline customers, suppliers, and investors.” Boeing took into account many different factors in making a major assembly investment decision, and the recurring strikes in Washington was just one of them.

This action by the pro-union NLRB is an abuse of the applicable law and precedent, and seems to be a political move made to placate the unions that will be crucial to the election efforts of Democrats next year, including President Obama. It is also an attack on right-to-work states like South Carolina.

The NLRB action has raised the ire of everyone from the governor and Representative Joe Wilson, to Senators Jim DeMint and Lamar Alexander. Luttig’s testimony made the NLRB the focus of the hearing, something that would otherwise not have happened because Harkin would never have called a hearing to specifically discuss this issue.

Harkin was clearly annoyed at the turn that the hearing took. He muttered about his coal mining father and the unfair attacks on unions and the NLRB. But the political danger of the NLRB action was demonstrated by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who given his background in suing corporations, is not generally seen as “pro-business.”

Blumenthal went out of his way to be nice to Luttig and Boeing, the biggest American export company with $29 billion in overseas sales in 2009. That might also be due to the fact that Boeing suppliers spend more than a billion dollars in Connecticut.

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Posted in: Economic Development in RTW States, Economic Impact of Unionization, Economics, Forced Dues, Forced-Dues for Politics, Government Grants to Unions, Intimidation Tactics, Political Activity, Right to Work, Right To Work States
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NRTW to Obama: Withdraw Big Labor Biased NLRB General Counsel Nominee

On May 6, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

National Right To Work President Mark Mix wrote President Obama declaring, “Solomon’s poor judgments regarding the deliberations that brought about his complaint [against Boeing and its workers in South Carolina] and the complaint itself disqualify him as an acceptable nominee for NLRB General Counsel. The Foundation requests that you withdrawal Lafe Solomon’s nomination to serve as General Counsel of the NLRB immediately.

Full text of Letter:

The Honorable Barack Obama

Re: Withdrawal of Lafe Solomon as NLRB General Counsel Nominee

Dear Mr. President:

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Lafe Solomon’s complaint against The Boeing Company (“Boeing”) in Case No. 19-CA-32431, to force a private aircraft manufacturer to move jobs from a Right To Work state to a compulsory unionism state, overstretches legal precedents and abuses the power that Congress granted the NLRB. As Acting General Counsel, Solomon should dismiss such filings rather than issuing ill-considered complaints.

The NLRB complaint against Boeing, and in effect the workers in South Carolina who will lose their jobs, seeks to force Boeing to halt its South Carolina (Right To Work State) factory expansion and re-locate it to the state of Washington (Forced Unionism State).

Boeing has already hired more than 1,000 new South Carolina-based employees for its 787 Dreamliner factory in Charleston. But simultaneously, Boeing has increased its employment in its Puget Sound, Washington factory. Boeing’s actions have created no loss of jobs for the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and its represented workers there. Yet, the NLRB’s proposed remedy will result in lost jobs immediately for 1,000 workers in the Charleston, South Carolina area. Ironically, many of these workers have already decertified the IAM at this same plant under a prior employer, thereby expressing their legally protected choice to work without union compulsion.

Without regard to the loss of jobs to workers in South Carolina and the fact that there has been no harm to the workers in Washington, General Counsel Solomon is attempting to curtail free speech, harm workers who have chosen to work without union representation, intimidate employers, discourage other employers from locating in Right To Work States, and encourage employers to leave the United States. The NLRB’s complaint has virtually no legal support, and its claim that Boeing committed “unlawful employer speech” for saying that the company “cannot afford to have work stoppages every three years” like it has experienced at the hands of the IAM in Washington since the 1980s is frivolous.

The NLRB position ignores that “the Supreme Court has long held that firms may consider the economic effect of strikes when making business decisions. Also, Boeing’s existing collective bargaining agreement with the IAM allows Boeing to build facilities at other locations.”

Solomon’s poor judgments regarding the deliberations that brought about his complaint and the complaint itself disqualify him as an acceptable nominee for NLRB General Counsel. The Foundation requests that you withdrawal Lafe Solomon’s nomination to serve as General Counsel of the NLRB immediately.

Respectfully submitted,

Mark Mix

President

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Posted in: Big Labor Payback, Economic Development in RTW States, Economic Impact of Unionization, Economics, Intimidation Tactics, NLRB, Obama Administration, Personnel Alert, Political Activity, Right to Work, Right To Work States, South Carolina, State Right To Work, Strike, Washington
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