This type of sh*t really pisses me off...

Quote:The labor board's Boeing ruling prompts Congress to protect right-to-work.
MAY 4, 2011

President Obama's National Labor Relations Board has spent the year thumbing its nose at Congress by reinterpreting longstanding labor law on behalf of union friends. Congress is finally fighting back.

Tennessee GOP Senator Lamar Alexander along with South Carolina Senators Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint are this week introducing legislation to rein in the labor board's latest assault on business. The board's complaint against Boeing, filed last month, is the first shot in a new union war on federal right-to-work law, a policy shift that is every bit as threatening as the drive to get rid of secret ballots in union elections.

Boeing decided 17 months ago to invest $2 billion building a new production plant for its 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina. It made the decision only after talks broke down with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, whose members wanted the work at a unionized plant in Washington state. The union's many strikes over the years have cost Boeing a bundle. South Carolina, like 21 other states, has a right-to-work law, which forbids compulsory unionism.

The Obama NLRB nonetheless chose to make Boeing a whipping boy in a new offensive against right-to-work states. It filed a complaint demanding that an administrative law judge halt the South Carolina plant (set to open in July), and force Boeing to move production to Washington.

This despite the fact that Boeing made clear this is a new production facility or that it has added 12,000 jobs in Washington since announcing the South Carolina move.

No matter. The complaint's real target is the federal right-to-work guarantee. Among the most celebrated provisions of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act is what's known as 14(b)—the section that allows states to pass right-to-work laws. The Boeing complaint guts that guarantee by effectively requiring companies to continue manufacturing in union states—or be found guilty of a rights violation. This is a union dream come true, on par with "card check."

As Senator Alexander tells us, this is a direct attack on a right-to-work law that was "thoroughly debated" by Congress in 1947 and "remains clear today." The Alexander-Graham-DeMint legislation would clarify the existing provision, ensuring that state right-to-work laws cannot be pre-empted by the NLRB or union contracts. We're assuming the 11 Democratic Senators from right-to-work states will stand up for their non-unionized workers—if Senator Majority Harry Reid (from right-to-work Nevada) allows a vote.

Boeing will fight the NLRB complaint, though that might mean a protracted court fight. It also means more uncertainty for every business considering a move of future production facilities to a right-to-work state. Many of them may simply relocate manufacturing overseas.

This is the latest gambit from an Administration that has been ramping up its regulatory and enforcement powers on behalf of special-interest allies such as unions. The only check against this is Congress, so we're glad to see Members speaking up.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...lenews_wsj

Spent 2 years on the other side of the table. Dealing with the NLRB is as entertaining as watching a monkey try to hump a football.

Quote:Another Labor Board Power Play

The Latest Attempt To Restrict The Movement Of Business And Capital.

May 23, 2011

The Obama-era National Labor Relations Board has tilted so heavily toward union interests that companies might be forgiven for thinking the process is rigged against them. A recent missive from one of the agency's top lawyers shows why.

In a May 10 memo to regional staffers, Associate General Counsel Richard Siegel discusses a March case in which the NLRB sided with telecommunications company Embarq Corp. in a dispute over its decision to close a Las Vegas call center and open a bigger facility in Florida. The company refused to explain to its union the rationale for the move. In America, business decisions are made by owners or executives and are rarely subject to compulsory bargaining, while unions confine their concerns to working conditions, pay and benefits.

NLRB Chairwoman Wilma Liebman, a long-time union lawyer, doesn't like that balance. "The Board's task would be easier, and more importantly, the [National Labor Relations] Act's policy of promoting collective bargaining might well be better served, if employers were required to provide unions with requested information about relocation decisions whenever there was a reasonable likelihood that labor-cost concessions might affect the decision," she wrote in her concurrence to the Embarq case.

Translation: Ms. Liebman wants to force far more companies to consult unions when they want to relocate, because unions might theoretically be able to offer concessions to avert a move if they had more information. Never mind that such a rule change would be an unprecedented intrusion into boardrooms, or that unions might use collective bargaining to request reams of data, such as payrolls and tax returns, to increase their negotiating leverage. In a "future case," Ms. Liebman added, "I would be open to modifying" the rule. Wink, nudge.

And voila, a few months later, we get Mr. Siegel's letter: "The General Counsel wishes to examine the concerns raised by Chairman Liebman in Embarq, and determine whether to propose a new standard in cases involving these kinds of information requests." So one of the NLRB's top lawyers is ordering the troops to scrounge up a case to bring to the accommodating Ms. Liebman and her two fellow Democrats who form a 3-2 majority on the NLRB.

This is getting to be a bad habit. In April, acting general counsel Lafe Solomon challenged Boeing's right to build a new factory in South Carolina, on grounds that such a move would hurt the company's existing union in Washington state. The case is a frontal assault on "right-to-work" states, which let individual workers choose whether to join a union.

As more private workers shun union membership, Big Labor wants government to rig the rules on its behalf. The current NLRB, the most politicized in memory, is obliging with an unprecedented attack on the free movement of business and capital in America. If it succeeds, the result will be a flight of jobs overseas, not more at home. The NLRB is controlled by President Obama's appointees, and the White House silence on their actions amounts to an endorsement.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...%3Darticle