Tag Archives: unions

In a one-two punch, the DOL and the NLRB issued notices of proposed rulemaking that together seek not only to hamstring employers in communicating with employees during a union organizing effort, but also to hamstring employers in communicating with employees about unions at all. These efforts are little more than a thinly veiled attempt to circumvent Congress and salvage the Obama administration’s support from organized labor – particularly following the Employee Free Choice Act debacle. Indeed, perhaps the “transparency” repeatedly espoused in the notices would be a little more credible if the agencies just came clean and admitted their role as political pawns.

The net effect of the proposed regulations is to expedite union elections, thereby providing a further advantage to organized labor (which is already winning over 50% of elections), and to effectively kill what an employer can actually do in the truncated time they would have. With a current median election time of 38 days from the date of petition (with 95% of elections occurring within 56 days), the NLRB’s proposed rules realistically seek to reduce that time period to not much more than 20 days. The purpose of the quickie election, of course, is to allow the union to propagandize its target audience, file a petition and hold the election immediately – before employees can be educated on the fact that there is a view other than the union’s.