With the 2012 election season already under way and the president’s poll numbers continuing to sink, Team Obama is desperately trying to shore up his labor-union base, courtesy of the now heavily radicalized National Labor Relations Board.
Since taking office, Obama has packed the NLRB with veteran union activists, like Craig Becker, previously the SEIU’s top lawyer and associate general counsel of the AFL-CIO.
That’s led to one-sided pro-union decisions like the one trying to block Boeing from opening a new plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state, saying it constitutes illegal punishment of union workers in Washington state.
The NLRB — founded in 1935 as an independent arbiter of labor-management disputes — has effectively become an arm of Big Labor.
Now the board has issued one of its most blatantly union-friendly decisions yet — rewriting the rules for unionization elections in a way that cripples employers’ right to mount a counter-organizing campaign.
The new rules shorten the period for elections to as little as 10 days and limits employers’ (but not unions’) right to conduct a campaign. In fact, unions can start a campaign long before an actual certification petition is filed; employers are effectively limited to the period starting with the filing of that petition.
Little wonder that the unions consider the rule change as important as the right to automatic dues deductions.
At the same time, the NLRB demanded that employers disclose much more information about the consultants they hire to respond to union-organizing campaigns — a requirement from which unions have been immune since 1959.
The stated reason for both actions — ensuring more accurate election tabulations — is mystifying on the face of it: The NLRB’s general counsel has described the current record of union elections as “outstanding.”
The lone Republican left on the NLRB exposed the real reason: to “effectively eviscerate an employer’s legitimate opportunity to express its views about collective bargaining.”
Fortunately, the tide of history is turning against Big Labor — union membership nationwide stands at less than 7 percent, the lowest in a century.
But with President Obama’s disastrous handling of the economy costing him more and more votes every day, he needs all the friends he can get.
Their dollars won’t hurt his re-election chances, either.