Tatler exclusive: Massive business coalition steps up to fight NLRB, Big Labor power grabs

A coalition of 86 national business associations, and 131 state and local organizations is stepping up to oppose the Obama administration’s National Labor Relations Board’s efforts to impose “card check” and other anti-business efforts, the Tatler has learned. The group, called the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, has sent a letter to Reps. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Tim Scott (R-SC) and Joe Wilson (R-SC), which thanks them for sponsoring H.R. 1976, the Job Protection Act. H.R. 1976 would amend the National Labor Relations Act to clarify its applicability with respect to state right to work laws, reining the agency in after a series of unprecedented actions that heavily tilt toward Big Labor.

The Coalition’s letter sounds the alarm about a number of recent NLRB actions, including:

In the last year alone, the NLRB has sought to:

• erode the right of employees to seek a federally supervised secret ballot election;
• permit continued and more severe union intimidation of employees;
• force employers to post a biased “notice of rights” that omits key information about workers’ rights to withhold payment of any union dues spent on politics and refuse to pay for a union’s unwanted services in the 22 states with right to work laws; and
• grant unprecedented access to union agents onto employers’ private property, even where a union’s intent is not to organize a company, but simply do it harm.

The letter, which the Tatler has obtained exclusively, highlights the Specialty Healthcare case, in which the NLRB may reverse 50 years of precedent and allow “micro unions.” Such unions, the letter warns, will disenfranchise workers who opt out of union membership, and greatly reduce employers’ ability to cross train employees and meet customer demands, while increasing the chances of work stoppages.

The letter concludes:

We thank you for introducing the Job Protection Act and encourage Members of Congress to use every tool available to them to stop this rogue agency from implementing policies to appease a single special interest at the expense of workers, businesses and our economy.

The Coalition’s letter is in pdf format, here. The Coalition represents an extremely broad range of American business, industry and services, from textiles to mining to aerospace to farming to medical.