The National Labor Relations Board voted Wednesday to finalize parts of the new union representation elections rule it proposed in
June.
Specifically, "Portions of the rule will reduce litigation on union elections by limiting testimony at regional hearings and consolidating appeals of regional director decisions into one post-election review request, the labor board said." It did
not vote on the provision calling on employers to provide more detail on the voter eligibility lists they must share with the board and the union, among other proposed changes.
The board intentionally limited the parts of the rule it's putting into place to the ones that were deemed "less controversial." But naturally, the Chamber of Commerce responded with the kind of talking points you'd expect if the NLRB was proposing to forcibly unionize every worker in the country, and, as threatened, filed suit against the NLRB to prevent the rule from taking effect. Because when is a proposal to reduce frivolous litigation and reduce the number of government hearings an employer faces an unconscionable imposition of the government's will? When the frivolous litigation and unnecessary hearings are done at the instigation of the company in order to avert a timely union vote.
The other, more controversial proposals will be considered later—if the NLRB has the needed three-person quorum. With Senate Republicans vowing to block President Obama's two recent nominees, in the absence of a recess appointment, the NLRB will be unable to function. And Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce would certainly be happy to have a non-functioning NLRB that couldn't consider the rest of this proposal. That's though even if every part of the initial proposal as it emerged in June was put into place, it wouldn't weight the union representation election process in favor of unions. It would just make it a little more difficult for companies to abuse the process, creating endless delays to kill momentum on the side of workers supporting a union, using those delays to fire and intimidate union supporters. A deck stacked in favor of workers and unions isn't even being talked about, but the Chamber is going to fight tooth and nail to keep the deck stacked in favor of corporations.