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 Mark Pearce, current chair of the NLRB, told AP this week that he hopes to have a new round of election rule changes in place before the end of the year. ”We keep our eye on the prize,” Pearce said. “Our goal is to create a set of rules that eliminate a lot of waste of time, energy and money for the taxpayers.”
This is the first signal from the Board that it will pursue the remainder of aggressive election changes first proposed last summer including electronic filing, shortened time frames and employee lists that include phone numbers and emails.
Pearce also said he wants the NLRB to become “a household word” for all workers, not just those affiliated with organized labor.
Indiana’s House of Representatives has cleared the way for Indiana to become the first right-to-work state in over a decade. The House voted 55-41 late Wednesday afternoon to make Indiana the nation’s 23rd right-to-work state after Democrats ended the cat an mouse games that denied the House the needed quorum to hold a vote. A slightly different version of the bill has already passed the state’s Senate and little opposition is expected in passage through of the House version. Gov. Mitch Daniels is expected to sign the bill into law before the end of next week.
Enough Indiana Democrats have taken their seats in the House to call for a vote on Right to Work legislation. Updates as they come in.
 The NLRB issued the following notice this morning:
To help provide further guidance to practitioners and human resource professionals, NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon has released a second report describing social media cases reviewed by his office. The Operations Management Memo covers 14 cases, half of which involve questions about employer social media policies. Five of those policies were found to be unlawfully broad, one was lawful, and one was found to be lawful after it was revised. The remaining cases involved discharges of employees after they posted comments to Facebook. Several discharges were found to be unlawful because they flowed from unlawful policies. But in one case, the discharge was upheld despite an unlawful policy because the employee’s posting was not work-related. The
Continue reading NLRB Issues Guidance on Social Media Cases
 The Indiana Senate passed Right to Work legislation on Monday, by a vote of 28-22 with nine Republicans joining all 13 Democrats in voting against it. The bill must also pass the Indiana House as Democrats continue to play games to avoid the quorum needed to hold a vote. The House will try to convene again at 1:30PM tomorrow for what will surely be a vote to pass the measure.
The House has so far imposed $4,000 in fines against missing Democrats, including $1,000 added to that total today. Democrats participated in the House Monday, without generating a quorum, offering multiple amendments to the bill that were all voted down by the GOP majority.
The deadline for bills to be passed out
Continue reading Indiana Right to Work Inches Forward
Lawmakers reached a compromise Friday that will change the process for NMB union elections in the transportation industry. The compromise paves the way for passage of long-term funding for the FAA. Republicans have blocked a long-term funding bill until union friendly changes to the NMB process made in 2010 were rolled back.
Unions elections will still be decided by a simple majority, but unions will now have to sign up 50% of effected workers on cards. (They currently need 35%) Most unions do not file unless they have 50% on cards now. Another change would allow for a run-off election between the top two vote-getters, even if one of those two is the option of “no union.” Currently if two unions are on the ballot and the company does not win with a simple majority the two unions run off under the assumption that a majority of voters
Continue reading Breaking: Compromise Reached on NMB Election Process
In this issue:
• Union Bailout Update • Yes, America, the Unions Are Killing Your Twinkies • Will the Unions Screw Up the Superbowl? • Laborers Vow Never to Forget Keystone • Picket Line Do’s and Don’ts • Teamsters Watch, Sticky Fingers and more…
NOTICE: You can make a PDF of this issue of INK directly from the post. Click here for instructions on how to do so.
Union Bailout Update
The NLRB held a “meet and greet” on Jan. 12 between lawmakers and the three newly sworn in Board members at the center of the latest NLRB firestorm. Members of Congress were denied the chance to question or even scan the resumes of Richard Griffin and Sharon Block as the two Democrats’ names were only first
Continue reading INK January 19, 2012
 The NLRB held a “meet and greet” on Jan. 12 between lawmakers and the three newly sworn in Board members at the center of the latest NLRB firestorm. Members of Congress were denied the chance to question or even scan the resumes of Richard Griffin and Sharon Block as the two Democrats’ names were only first sent to Congress on December 15, the day before the start of the Senate’s pro forma holiday session. (Republican Terence Flynn was nominated last January.)
Less than three weeks after nominating Griffin and Block, on Jan. 3, President Obama lost patience with the process, returning from holiday to invoke his new “We Can’t Wait” doctrine, and seat all three nominees in what just might be his
Continue reading Union Bailout Update
The House Education and Workforce Committee has reacted to those “We Can’t Wait” appointments with a reminder to be very, very afraid of the new 2012 Obama NLRB regardless of how unconstitutional it all may turn out to be in the end. Just look at the short list of Obama Board’s decisions since 2009 –
Specialty Healthcare gave Big Labor the green light to gerrymander the workplace for their own gain using “micro-units” of as few as two employees. (While still making no provisions for “micro-units” that might wish to opt out of union representation entirely.) The Giant Rat ruling allows unions to harass neutral third-party businesses with impunity. (While also declaring the rat itself “protected free speech”) The rollback of
Continue reading What Can We Expect from Obama’s New NLRB?
 In the last issue of INK we posed the question no one else at the time was asking – Will Unions Kill the Twinkie? Since then LRI President Phil Wilson appeared on Fox Business to explain not only how unions are killing the company, but how union concessions in the bankruptcy process are critical to saving it.
The company’s bankruptcy filings make clear what we at LRI first suspected – financially Hostess is sinking for its dozens of union contracts that chain the company to massive “too big to fail” multi-employer union pension funds. Court documents show the company is in debt to the Bakery & Confection Union & Industry Pension Fund alone for a jaw-dropping $944M, far and
Continue reading Yes, America, the Unions Are Killing Your Twinkies
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