Rerun: House Labor Committee GOP Pushes Through Bill Attacking Americans’ Rights That Will Go Nowhere
WASHINGTON – House Republicans in the Education and the Workforce Committee today pushed through a bill that would create great uncertainty by not allowing final adjudications on workplace disputes and union elections.
“This bill is a frontal assault on collective bargaining in this country,” said Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ), the senior Democratic member of the Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee. “The outrage from the Republicans is all about politics, not about so-called uncertainty that they have created themselves.”
The Republican bill (H.R. 1120) would stop nearly all activity by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB reviews appeals on unfair labor practice rulings by administrative law judges and petitions for elections made by NLRB regional directors. If this bill were to become law, those appeals would not be heard, decisions could not be enforced, workers’ rights violations would go remedied, and election results would go uncounted. The bill also threatens to shut down all elections and unfair labor practice proceedings in entire regions of the country. This would create significant chaos in workplaces.
The Republican bill was in response to the D.C. circuit court ruling, which said that President Obama’s recess appointments to the NLRB were not proper because they were not made during the recess in between Congresses and that those vacancies did not arise during the recess itself. If this ruling were to apply to past presidents, hundreds of past recess appointments would be deemed unconstitutional under the court’s unprecedented test.
The NLRB announced that they would appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.
Next Article