Recently, Big Labor bosses converged on Philadelphia to issue their latest demands of Washington, DC. The event, labeled “Workers Stand for America Rally,” purported to offer a positive vision of the future. But the so-called “Second Bill of Rights” proposed by union bosses represents the same old job-killing policies Big Labor has pushed for years.
Rather than emitting the air of a confident movement promoting a progressive agenda, the so-called “Second Bill of Rights” has more of the feel of petulant demands from a desperate and dwindling special interest lobby that has alienated elected officials in Washington with its unreasonable demands and can only resort to bullying the rest.
Big Labor feels its grasp on power brokers in the nation’s capital slipping. With dwindling labor participation and diminished influence among the American electorate, union bosses are making a push to secure more power before it is too late.
And Big Labor’s newest push consists leveraging bureaucratic connections at relatively obscure government agencies that nevertheless wield considerable power, such as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the National Mediation Board (NMB).
In a recent decision, the NLRB is allowing unions to form small collective bargaining units known as micro-unions with as few as two workers inside one department. Without the ability to unionize full workforces, Big Labor came up with this new idea by virtue of a good friend on the NLRB, Craig Becker. Prior to his recess appointment to the NLRB, Mr. Becker was counsel to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Since handing labor this victory, he has since returned to claim his reward, this time at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), where he serves as general co-counsel.
But micro unions isn’t the only way that the NLRB is stacking the deck in favor of labor – they also green-lighted ambush elections. Giving unions the ability to force an election in a workplace in as few as 10 days, these quickie elections stack the deck against businesses drastically increasing the bosses’ success in unionizing. With just a few days between the time the petition is filed and an election takes place, small businesses with limited resources don’t have enough time to seek outside counsel and make their case to employees.
What’s worse is that even the NLRB isn’t playing fair. The ambush election rule has since been thrown out by the D.C. District Court after it found that the rule passed without a quorum of the board present. But, those are the stop at nothing tactics that characterizes Big Labor these days.
The “Second Bill of Rights” tries to capitalize on the class warfare theme that the Obama Administration and Congress have been pushing for months. Except, America isn’t buying it this time around. The so-called “Second Bill of Rights” seeks a government that confiscates and distributes private resources to the benefit of union bosses and detriment of employees and employers. The end result would be less freedom and economic ruin.
In Big Labor’s “Second Bill of Rights,” America as a whole becomes weaker – but union bosses enhance their power. And, that is really what their vision for the future is all about.
Fred Wszolek is a spokesperson for the Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI).
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