Dive Brief:
- A report at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website says that Republicans aren’t letting a presidential veto stop them from trying to block so called NLRB "ambush election" rules that would make it easier and faster for unions to organize.
- Stymied by the president’s March veto of their resolution against the policy change, Republicans now are using the budget process to block the rule through an appropriations bill that recently cleared House and Senate committees, according to the article. The bill includes provisions to prevent the NLRB from implementing the rules,
- The NLRB rules would allow smaller bargaining units or “micro-unions” to form within departments of the same company, allow electronic voting in union elections, hold companies responsible for labor violations of business partners such as franchisees, and reduce the waiting period between the circulation of organizing petitions and union elections.
Dive Insight:
At a recent hearing, NLRB chairman Mark Pearce said the rule-making was designed to streamline and modernize, with promoting efficiency as the ultimate goal. Employers and business groups have taken a different view, however, and say that the new rules will be unfair to them in combating misinformation from union organizations, among other things.
Republicans argue the new rules are harmful because they don’t allow employers enough time to respond to unionization efforts, The Post-Gazette reports. Previous rules required a 38-day wait between petitioning and voting. The new rule, which went into effect in April, would allow votes after two weeks.
Lynn Rhinehart, the general counsel for the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., told the Post-Gazette that the attempt to cut the funding is a reaction to new rules regarding union elections that are not necessarily pro-union. “Unions win some of those elections, unions lost some of those elections,” she said. “Fundamentally it's obvious, they are trying to undermine workers rights.” Stay tuned.
