An internal NLRB document leaked last week suggests the Boeing complaint is only the first salvo in the NLRB’s all out war on free enterprise. Since its inception, the NLRB has only compelled employers to negotiate working conditions, not business decisions. However, the leaked memo suggests the Board will soon change all that and for the first time not only grant the union boss a seat in the boardroom but also veto power. The memo tells regional directors to flag all relocation cases so the Board might consider whether to “propose a new standard” and modify the rules established two decades ago in Dubuque Packing, one can presume using one of those flagged employers as their next scapegoat. Under existing NLRB rulings, an employer is free to relocate or consolidate facilities without consulting the union as long as those changes are not made primarily to lower labor costs. But Board Chair Liebman has repeatedly expressed her displeasure with Dubuque and would prefer to compel employers to provide a union with detailed economic justification for relocation to then bargain with that union over the need and nature of relocation or lose the right to it. Potentially businesses could be hamstrung in such negotiations for years if the union so chooses. Bottom line, the Board wants such business decisions made only to benefit unions (Never to be confused with unionized workers!) and never investors, owners, shareholders, customers or non-unionized employees. One has to wonder if the Board could then expand the scope of that logic to cover other business decisions that affect the size of a unionized workforce such as hours of operation, product lines and manufacturing techniques. It’s also no stretch to imagine unions negotiating relocations not to protect the jobs of members potentially affected by them but only to coerce neutrality somewhere else. Meanwhile, as we reported last week, the House Oversight Committee sent an excoriating letter to NLRB Acting General Counsel Solomon demanding, among other things, records of any communications between the Board and union officials. The Committee then followed up with a similar set of demands for the National Mediation Board Chair Harry Hoglander to hopefully shed some much needed light on the NMB’s surprise decision last year to do away with 75 years of majority rule in transportation elections. These and other House actions come on the heels of the Job Protection Act’s introduction in the Senate. That bill would clarify the role of the NLRB and guarantee an employer’s right to relocate anywhere within the United States. House and Senate members have also called on Obama to immediately withdraw the names of both Solomon and Craig Becker (both temporary appointments) from nomination to their respective positions because of the blatant destructive overreach of the Boeing complaint. 
Sadly, none of this has sat well with Harry Reid who, using a somewhat addled interpretation of checks and balances, chided Republicans for their attempts to sully with partisan politicking the hallowed halls of blind justice that house the National Labor Relations Board. Reid seemed particularly piqued with GOP threats to hold up permanent appointments for Becker and Solomon, the one and same Harry Reid who held the Bush NLRB hostage without a quorum for over two years and bragged about it daily. “We all know that Republicans dislike organized labor.” Reid read on the Senate floor this week. “We know they disdain unions because unions demand fairness and equality from big businesses that Republicans swath and shield at all cost.”
