Author: serpnames

The NLRB’s war against the statutory scheme enacted by Congress in the Taft Hartley Act of 1947 was on full display last week.

In order to prevent the expansion of industrial conflicts from threatening interstate commerce, Congress made it an unfair labor practice for a union to threaten, coerce or restrain any person engaged in commerce to cease doing business with any other person.  Picketing has long been considered inherently coercive.  Consequently, picketing a neutral employer to cause it to cease doing business with another employer with whom the union had a labor dispute was unlawful secondary picketing.

For decades following the amendments, the Board and the courts construed picketing broadly.  It could be a picket placed in a snow bank or the posting union agents outside the entrance of an employer’s business.  Last year, the Obama Board overruled this long-standing precedent and held that union agents holding huge stationary banners outside the premises of a neutral employer with whom the union had no dispute with an objective to stop business relations with a secondary employer was not picketing or its functional equivalent, thus not unlawful.

Last week the Board went even further.  In a case known as Carpenters Local 1827 (United Parcel Service), 357 NLRB No. 44, the Board reversed a careful 71-page analysis by an agency Administrative Law Judge to find that a union and a union member could not have meant what they said when they called bannering “picketing” and refused to cross the “picket line” the banners created.  Despite the fact that the union canceled a 5-day convention at the “bannered” Hyatt Hotel and a customer of UPS told the “bannered” UPS that as a result of the “picketing” it could not use UPS for its deliveries, the Board found that the activity was nevertheless not picketing or otherwise confrontational or coercive but protected speech.   This, however, is precisely this kind of “an automatic response to a signal” that the Board has held distinguishes lawful persuasion from the unlawful labor practice Act proscribed by the Taft Hartley Act.

Speaking of the latter Act, a prior NLRB held 60 years ago: “Congress was attempting to deal a death blow to secondary boycotts . . .  and desired to use all the power at its command to eliminate them from the American industrial scene.”  Not so for the current Board that is blinded by a desire to expand union power.

As summed up by Republican Board Member Brian Hayes in dissent, the majority’s decision “resurrect[s] the coercive secondary boycott as a permissible tactic in labor disputes.  It now remains for the courts or Congress to reverse the course.”

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The National Labor Relations Board has a responsibility to remain neutral between unions and employers. But actions show that their plan is to increase union power to the detriment of legitimate management and employee interests including the interests of the country’s principal job creators, small business.  Stacked with former union cronies, the NLRB has made an effort to disguise their agenda.

While it has been hard to do with the Boeing complaint, the NLRB keeps trying.  First, its Acting General Counsel claimed his Boeing complaint was “routine” and “not unprecedented.”  Two former NLRB Chairmen, William Gould, a Democrat, and Peter Schaumber, a Republican, firmly disagreed.  Now, the NLRB is claiming that it would have taken the same action if Boeing’s new plant had been opened in any state, not just a right-to-work state.  Again, a statement intentionally meant to mislead.

Traditionally, the NLRB files complaints against employers if a union files a charge.  The likelihood that the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers would have filed a complaint if Boeing had moved to Illinois, New York or another more heavily unionized state seems unlikely.

In the end, it’s all about money.  Workers’ union dues keep Big Labor in the expensive life style it is accustomed to.  While right-to-work states do not outlaw unionization, unions do little organizing there because right-to-work laws protect workers from being forced into union membership.  Simply said, these laws diminish union boss power and their access to money.

Further, right-to-work states are more prosperous economically.  Consider these facts:

• Unemployment is lower in right-to-work states and home ownership is higher.

• Right-to-work states produce more highly-educated workers than forced unionization states, and it comes as no surprise that the overwhelming majority of young professionals – 94.3% to be exact, choose to live in right-to-work states.

• Additionally, in states without forced unionization, employers are more capable of providing health insurance to their employees – something forced unionization states have struggled to do. In the decade between 1999-2009, the number of people covered by any form of private health insurance decreased by 5.7% in forced-unionization states, but in right-to-work states, that number actually increased one percent.

• The freedom provided by right-to-work states affects the stability of its businesses; therefore, it secures the stability of benefits for workers.

This proves why businesses are looking to locate in right-to-work states rather than shipping jobs overseas.  In tough economic times, the NLRB should not be pursuing job-killing policies in an effort to advance a narrow ideological agenda.  The NLRB is seeking to camouflage the Boeing complaint for what it is: an attack on right-to-work states and right-to-work laws.  Don’t be fooled.