In a post on the National Association of Manufacturers’ Shopfloor blog, NAM VP for Human Resources Policy Joe Trauger writes that the National Labor Relations Board has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to shorten the time for union certification elections. Says Trauger, “These so-called snap elections are the latest attempt by the NLRB to effectively do for the unions what Congress wouldn’t – stack the deck in their favor.”
The NLRB is racking up points in the business community as the most tone-deaf federal agency.
On the heels of its aggressive action against states with laws guaranteeing a secret ballot in union organizing elections and its blatantly anti-business pursuit of sanctions against Boeing for that company’s establishment of an assembly line in the right-to-work-state of South Carolina, this latest proposed rule by the NLRB is yet another job killer.
If this is the administration’s idea of how to streamline regulations, then it needs to go back to the drawing board.
In all of my conversations with Arizona’s job creators, no one has ever pointed to slow union certification elections as a barrier to making our state more competitive for job growth.
As Trauger writes, “What’s broken in the system they’re trying to fix? In 2009, labor unions won 68.5 percent of representation elections. Furthermore, 95 percent of all elections are conducted within 56 days of the filing petition submitted by the union. In 2010, the average time from filing of the petition to election was 31 days.”
President Obama has called for U.S. exports to double over a five-year period. With his record on labor, though, all we’ll be exporting is jobs.
Glenn Hamer is the president and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry
