Just in time for Labor Day, the National Labor Relations Board is making sure that unemployment remains high in America. Following its attack on Boeing for opening a new plant in South Carolina, and new proposals for quickie union elections, the board will now require employers to put up 11-by-17-inch posters informing workers of their right to unionize.
On Thursday, millions of unemployed Americans will be watching President Obama’s speech to Congress, desperately waiting to hear the president explain how employers will create more jobs.
Requiring posters won’t benefit the 14 million unemployed Americans, but it is another message to employers that the administration regards them with suspicion. Other countries don’t require these posters and welcome American businesses to hire their workers.
The rule, to take effect Nov. 14, is a parting gift from Wilma B. Liebman, the former chairwoman, and a board member since 1997, whose term expired Aug. 28. She believes in unions and their ability to raise workers’ incomes.
The required poster size is larger than for notices for minimum wage, employee polygraph protection, family medical leave, equal employment opportunity and other employee rights guaranteed by Congress.
If 20 percent or more employees are most comfortable speaking a language other than English, an additional poster in translation must go up. That’s two posters.
In a lack of symmetry, the poster does not inform workers that they have a right to ask for a decertification vote to kick out a union. Nor that they have a right to a refund of the portion of union dues used for political contributions. These omissions are symptomatic of a tilt toward union bosses and against workers under Obama.
Posters don’t convey what workers may lose from unionizing, such as the ability to earn individual merit raises. They don’t point out that collective bargaining can result in lower pay and job loss for some workers.
Liebman defended the rule by saying that collective bargaining puts more money in workers’ pockets, increasing spending power and creating a stronger economy.
Workers don’t believe this. Every year, fewer American workers belong to unions. The fraction of private-sector workers belonging to unions is less than 7 percent, compared with 35 percent in the mid-1950s.
Workers are voting with their feet, migrating from unionized states to right-to-work states, where by law they cannot be required to join a union as a condition of work. As a result of population shifts in the 2010 census, nine congressional seats will move to right-to-work states from forced-unionization states in 2012.
Over the past 25 years, right-to-work states have created more than twice as many jobs as unionized states. General Motors and Chrysler needed federal bailouts in 2008 and 2009, not Toyota, Honda, Nissan and BMW, located in right-to-work states in the South.
According to John Raudabaugh, a board member from 1990 to 1993, the board lacks authority to require the poster under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act.
Raudabaugh told me that “every federal statute in the field of labor and employment law, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Railway Labor Act, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, specifically mentions the right of the relevant agency to issue posting of notices to employees. The National Labor Relations Act is silent on the notice to post.”
The Railway Labor Act was amended in 1934, one year before NLRA passed, and included specific mention of a notice to employees. If Congress had wanted non-railroad employers to post notices, it would have specified this.
Mr. Obama, in your Thursday speech, tear down those posters.
Examiner Columnist Diana Furchtgott-Roth ([email protected]), former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
