PrairiePundit

Washington Free Beacon: Senate Republicans grilled the nation’s top labor regulators for undermining long-standing labor laws to benefit unions on Thursday. Mark Gaston Pearce, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and Richard Griffin, the NLRB’s general counsel, appeared before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday to lay out the agency’s budget request. Griffin touted the board’s high caseload and efforts to “preserve industrial peace” to justify a modest uptick to its budget request. “Without sufficient funding employees and employers will lose,” Griffin said. Republican senators were more interested in probing the two men about controversial new regulations and rules emerging from the agency that threaten right to work laws and an unbiased election process. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.), the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, asked Pearce about a call for briefs the agency issued in April exploring whethe...

The Hill: The Supreme Court appeared Monday to disapprove of three recess appointments by President Obama in a case that tests the limits of executive power. Nearly every justice on the nation's highest adjudicating body questioned the constitutionality of his 2012 National Labor Relations Board picks, which bypassed Senate confirmation. Even Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee and part of the court's liberal wing, said, "The history is entirely on the Senate's side, not your side." Chief Justice John Roberts also defended the Senate’s role in approving nominees as an important check on presidential power, contending, “They have an absolute right not to confirm nominees that the president submits.” At issue is whether Obama overstepped his bounds by making the appointments during a limited “pro-forma” session of the Senate, as well as when exactly presidents can install judges and fill top federal vacancies without the upper chamber’s consent. ... Obama...

Red States: Union bosses are worried, and rightly so. Very soon, the club that union bosses have been using to beat employers over the head with to change the labor relations landscape in America may get taken away from them and they are not happy . The problem is, union bosses wrote the playbook and their strategy is now coming back to haunt them–in spades. In 2007, when vacancies began to occur at the National Labor Relations Board, union allies in the U.S. Senate blocked confirmation of President Bush’s nominees, knowing that a Democrat president would likely win the 2008 election who would then stack the NLRB with pro-union appointees. On the day of his 2009 inauguration, Barack Obama appointed Teamster attorney and long-time NLRB member Wilma Liebman to the top spot of the NLRB. Shortly thereafter, Obama nominated SEIU and AFL-CIO counsel Craig Becker. Republicans, deploying the Democrats’ strategy of not giving in to union bosses’ prized nominee, turned the tables on union bo...

Washington Post: Obama’s recess appointment authority to be examined The Supreme Court says it will decide next term whether President Obama exceeded his authority. This is a case that Obama will probably lose and should.  The Senate has the sole discretion to determine when it is "in session."

Washington Examiner Editorial: Democracy is coming to the American workplace, slowly. Twenty-four states now have right-to-work laws, but Big Labor continues fighting them tooth and nail, often with the same underhanded tactics it uses to harass independent-minded workers in states without right-to-work statutes. That's why Congress should focus like a laser on the National Labor Relations Board. Right-to-work laws guarantee that workers cannot be forced to join a union or pay dues to one as a condition of employment. But unions are in charge of administering these laws. Well -- surprise! -- they typically make it as difficult as possible for workers who resist unions and do as little as required to inform workers of their right-to-work options. Consider the case of Joshua Sterrett of Indianapolis. He quit the Communications Workers of America (CWA) in January under his state's newly-adopted right-to-work law. But dues continued to be deducted from his paycheck after he quit ...

Michael Barone: ... Thus despite his personal liabilities–Sanford as governor in 2009 was caught running off to Argentina to be with his then girlfriend/now fiancee when he was married to the mother of his sons and governor of South Carolina–Sanford won. He charged that Colbert Busch was a creature of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and pointed out that she received contributions from the labor unions that supported the National Labor Relations Board action that threatened to shut down the Boeing 787 assembly plant in North Charleston. Republican primary and runoff voters had the opportunity to choose another candidate, but in their wisdom chose the one candidate with personal blemishes which might prevent him from winning a solidly Republican district. On their behalf it may be said that as congressman and governor Sanford was a strong fiscal conservative. ...  The unions really miscalculated their effect on this race.  Nancy Pelosi is also a divisive  figur...

Red States: Despite Veto Threat, U.S. House Votes To Freeze Obama’s Constitutionally-Challenged NLRB   As Congress votes to curtail the NLRB, Obama pushes a budget increase for the rogue agency I think the best way to handle this agency is not funding any activity that is taking place in a constitutionally suspect manner.  Stop funding the appointees who were not approved by the Senate and stop funding any hearings that they may participate in.

Mark Tapscott: Interesting facts are often found when journalists, activists and individual citizens file Freedom of Information Act requests seeking information somebody in the federal government might not want the public to know. Take the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB has been ground zero for much of President Obama's tenure in the Oval Office for his efforts to reward Big Labor for its campaign support in 2008 and 2012. As a result, the NLRB has issued hundreds of rulings since 2009 that critics in the business community and elsewhere say too often give unfair - and sometimes maybe even illegal - advantages to the unions. Even more controversial has been Obama's insistence that he can pack the NLRB with his appointees, even if doing so requires recess appointments when the Senate is not in recess. A federal court recently ruled such appointments unconstitutional, but the Obama appointees keep right on truckin' as if nothing happened. But there are other inte...

Reuters: A California-based hospital company says it will not comply with at least two National Labor Relations Board rulings from the past year after a federal court invalidated three of President Barack Obama's recess appointments to the NLRB last week. Prime Healthcare Services, which owns 21 hospitals in California and three other states, told Reuters on Wednesday that it had informed one of its employee unions that it would not follow an NLRB ruling mandating the collection of union dues even after a collective bargaining agreement has expired, or a ruling compelling employers to provide unions with certain materials during internal investigations. The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit casts a shadow of doubt over rulings the board has issued over the past year because without the three appointments, the board lacked a quorum. One lawyer for the Prime Healthcare union, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, said the...

Washington Times: In a case freighted with major constitutional implications, a federal appeals court on Friday overturned President Obama ’s controversial recess appointments from last year, ruling he abused his powers and acted when the Senate was not actually in a recess. The three-judge panel’s ruling is a major blow to Mr. Obama . The judges ruled that the appointments Mr. Obama made to the National Labor Relations Board are illegal, and the board no longer has a quorum to operate. But the ruling has even broader constitutional significance, with the judges arguing that the president’s recess appointment powers don’t apply to “intrasession” appointments — those made when Congress has left town for a few days or weeks. The judges signaled the power only applies after Congress has adjourned sine die, which is a legislative term of art that signals the end to a long work period. In modern times, it means the president could only use his powers when Congress quits busines...

Red States: Witness Protection Program Needed: Obama’s NLRB Gives Unions License To Intimidate & Retaliate Against Witnesses Unions have total control of the NLRB.  The House should defend this terrible agency.

Washington Times: A federal appeals court on Wednesday questioned not only President Obama’s controversial January recess appointments but the entire system of such appointments, using oral arguments in a case to cast doubt on whether presidential powers can ever be exercised unless Congress has adjourned for good. The case involves a challenge to Mr. Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board in early January — during a time when the Senate was holding pro forma sessions every three days, specifically for the purposes of denying him the chance to make those appointments. Mr. Obama argued that since the full Senate wasn’t actually meeting regularly, lawmakers were technically in an intra-session “recess” and he could use his constitutional power to make appointments not needing the chamber’s consent. But two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit questioned not only that move, but every recess appointment made other than during a traditio...

Washington Examiner Editorial: President Obama portrays himself as a president who stands up for the most vulnerable in our society. Nursing home patients and their families in Connecticut got a look behind the rhetoric last week. In the name of standing up for workers' rights, Obama's National Labor Relations Board -- the one staffed by people he installed through controversial "recess appointments" when the Senate was in session -- sued to have a nursing home reinstate employees who went on strike. The Service Employees International Union members who worked at HealthBridge nursing homes went on strike after rejecting the company's final offer in contract negotiations. HealthBridge cut benefits, terminated the pension plan and raised wages by 2.2 percent. As they left the facility, some of the union members sabotaged Alzheimer's wards in two nursing homes. One of the nursing home directors told police that "the name tags on the patients' doors for...

Fox News: The rap sheet for members of the International Union of Operating Engineers reads like something out of "Goodfellas."    Embezzlement. Wire fraud. Bribery. That's just scratching the surface of crimes committed by the IUOE ranks. And it is from this union that President Obama earlier this year picked one of his latest appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency tasked with resolving labor disputes between unions and management.    That recess appointee, Richard Griffin, was former general counsel for the 400,000-member union of heavy equipment operators -- a union tainted over the years by mob connections and a history of corruption.    Public documents obtained by Fox News show that more than 60 IUOE members have been arrested, indicted or jailed in the last decade on charges that include labor racketeering, extortion, criminal enterprise, bodily harm and workplace sabotage.    ...

NY Times: Labor Board Member Resigns Over Leak to G.O.P. Allies The board’s inspector general had found that one of its five members, Terence F. Flynn, gave information to two Republican associates, including an adviser to Mitt Romney. The NLRB has become an example of Obama's hostility to business and his payoff to the union thugs who support him.  Disclosing their nefarious plans is a public service.

Red States: Recently, a federal court  smacked down  Barack Obama’s union appointees at the National Labor Relations Board for the manner in which they imposed their ambush election scheme. The scheme is, however,  far from dead  as the union-controlled labor board is “ determined to move forward ” with the needless rules. While there is much opposition to the NLRB’s ambush election rules, few have yet to address the underlying issue that makes the scheme unfair to workers and a disaster for America’s union-free workplace and that is:  Unions and their organizers LIE to and deceive workers… All. The. Time. What’s worse is that, not only do unions lie to, trick and deceive workers into unionizing,  it’s perfectly legal to do so. With a median time from petition-filing to election, unions have been winning around 60% or more of the elections conducted by the NLRB for about a decade ( unions won 71% in 2011 ). However, with ambush elections, the ...

The Hill: A federal judge ruled Monday that a contentious union election rule proposed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is “invalid.” In an 18-page memorandum opinion, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg struck the regulation down, saying the labor board only had two members when it voted on the final rule in December 2011. Boasberg said the agency needed at least three members to have a quorum for action on the rule.   “According to Woody Allen, 80 percent of life is just showing up. When it comes to satisfying a quorum requirement, though, showing up is even more important than that. Indeed, it is the only thing that matters — even when the quorum is constituted electronically. In this case, because no quorum ever existed for the pivotal vote in question, the Court must hold that the challenged rule is invalid,” Boasberg wrote. The NLRB rule would speed up union elections and has been criticized by Republican lawmakers and business groups. Two NLRB memb...

Daily Caller: A right-to-work organization is taking the White House to court over the president’s controversial decision to install three new members on the National Board Relations board without Senate approval. The legal challenge came after the three new members approved a legal response in an existing lawsuit. The plaintiffs asked the judge on Friday to rule that their participation is invalid because President  Barack Obama  did not have the authority to appoint them. “We asked [the judge] to consider the question of whether they are  constitutionally seated ,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation. Without legitimate appointments, they can’t participate in the lawsuit, Mix told The Daily Caller. And without their participation the board does (not) have the quorum needed to implement the new regulations that the foundation opposes. ... There will probably be other suits challenging these appointments.  The Justice Depart...

Bloomberg Editorial: Obama Chooses Politics Over Principle in Naming Cordray Obama claims it is a "recess" appointment even though the Senate is technically in session.  He did the same thing with tree appointments of union supporters to the NLRB.  The appointments will be challenged in the courts as will all their attempts at rule making.

The Hill: Business groups continue to press the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over its proposed rule to have employers post notices informing workers of their organizing rights.  On Monday, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) will present oral arguments in federal court for their lawsuit against the proposed regulation. On a Friday conference call with reporters, Joe Trauger, NAM’s vice president of human resources, said the union poster rule is one of many actions the NLRB has taken this year that has angered business.  “This is just one part of what has been an activist agenda that could have a negative impact on employers,” Trauger said.  The rule, which was meant to go into effect this November, requires employers to post notices in their workplaces that would inform workers of their right to form unions. After pushback from trade associations, the NLRB delayed implementation of the rule until January next year, so businesses could prepare...