A group of 47 House Republican lawmakers is urging the heads of Congress’ appropriations committee to restrain the National Labor Relations Board from implementing several of former President Barack Obama’s changes to labor regulations.
A letter from the GOP members of Congress argues the board, the main federal labor law enforcement agency, went too far and instituted changes that shift the balance in favor of union recruiting efforts. It asks the appropriators to include provisions in the fiscal 2018 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education budget that would block the labor board from proceeding with Obama’s changes.
“Each of the provisions would address troubling initiatives by [the NLRB] that overturn decades of well-settled law and together upset the historic and appropriate balance between employer and employee rights,” the lawmakers state. The lead author of the letter was Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee’s subcommittee on worker protections.
The letter cites three issues. First is the board’s efforts to expand the “joint employer” standard — when one business is legally liable for workplace violations by another business — from direct control of the other company’s workers to the much vaguer “indirect control” standard. It also cites the board’s efforts to reduce the time from when workplace organizing elections are authorized to when they are held, dubbing it the “ambush election” rule. Finally, it criticizes the board’s decision to allow unions to organize subgroups of workers rather than all employees at once, a move that allows unions to get a foothold in businesses they otherwise lack the worker support to organize.
