Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) plans to offer amendments to stem the powers of the National Labor Relations Board at the Senate Appropriations Committee today.
The amendments include prohibition of funds to enforce the NLRB rules that allows micro-unions and rush, “ambush” elections that give employers little time to mount a defense.
“The NLRB is the Grim Reaper of job creation,” said Graham. “They seem hell-bent on interjecting themselves into private sector business decisions for purely political reasons.”
The senator cited a case last year where the NLRB attempted to intervene in Boeing expansion plans in his home state. “Their decision did great damage to job creation efforts and they seem intent on continuing this destructive behavior,” Graham added. “On issue after issue the NLRB is destroying jobs and making the United States uncompetitive in the international marketplace.”
Another amendment would protect secret ballots in union elections. Last year, the NLRB threatened to sue four states, including South Carolina, for passing laws prohibiting card-check.
“The unprecedented actions taken by the NRLB move the agency into areas it’s never gone before,” Graham said. “My amendments aim to protect employers and employees from the counterproductive actions taken by the NLRB and I hope they will be adopted by the Senate Appropriations Committee.”
Historically, the federal courts have had little truck with NLRB excesses and haven’t been reticent to overturn Board decisions. One might not like what the courts did either, but they kept the Board in check. I predicted from the outset that Boeing would not pursue their case to the USSC. In the world of Comrade Obama, someone would whisper in the Boeing CEO’s ear something like, “nice company you have there, too bad if none of your military aircraft were responsive to the RFP and all of your civilian aircraft had safety problems.” Unions, particularly IAM, have used the safety and maintenance problems ploy against airlines with which they have labor disputes for years. One really can’t tell objectively whether an airline is cheaping out on maintenance or an aircraft type has a defect because the unions use such complaints and an often overly union friendly FAA to bludgeon the airlines. Think of the impact on the flying public if the FAA were to announce that the B737 had a major inherent safety problem – at any given time probably half the flying public is sitting in a B737 and some airlines fly them exclusively.
In Comrade Obama’s new fascist state, no company that ever expects to do business with the government or which is subject to government regulation or funding would dare sue to have an adverse decision overturned for fear of having the entire federal alphabet soup unleashed on their operations. Big, well financed businesses can handle heavy regulation and often encourage regulation to keep the upstart competition out, but they can’t handle being heavily regulated while their competitor(s) aren’t regulated at all, and that is the situation Comrade Obama has brought us.
Graham’s amendments will go precisely nowhere; they’re just for show and, maybe, to force the Democrats to vote – if they can get them to actually vote on anything. So long as the communists are in control of the regulatory agencies, every company in America exists at their sufferance. Notice I didn’t say “So long as Comrade Obama is in power” because just defeating him in November won’t be nearly enough. I’ve tried to clean up after Democrats a couple of times and it takes a couple of administrations to even make a dent in it. Most Republican executives barely even try; they put a few buddies and contributors in the top spots and leave the rest of the bureaucracy firmly in control of the Democrats then spend four miserable years wondering why they’re thwarted, leaked, and sabotaged at every turn.
That’ll work until the Chinese start make 737 knock-offs. Which I believe is supposed to start in 2014.
So, tell me again why the NLRB exists at all? I don’t see “labor relations” among the enumerated powers…..shouldn’t it be left to the states or private contract law?