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The Biden Gang continues to be the gift that keeps on giving for organized labor — and keeps on taking from the rest of us.
Again last week, the president lived up to his campaign promise to make his the most “pro-union administration you’ve ever seen” when it came out that Jennifer Abruzzo, his hand-picked National Labor Relations Board counsel, had authored a memo in which she asserted it is an unfair labor practice for a private-sector employer to hold a meeting at which employees are warned about the potentially negative impacts a decision to form a union might have on their workplace.
If the name sounds familiar, Abruzzo is the former National Communications Workers operative appointed to the post after Biden abruptly terminated Trump-appointee Peter Robb — whose term hadn’t even expired — within minutes of taking the oath of office.
For the record, it is already illegal for an employer to “encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization.” However, per the NLRB’s 1948 ruling in Babcock and Wilcox, the agency has consistently upheld a company’s right to require employees on company time to attend meetings at which management’s views on unionization are communicated.
Congress agreed, amending the National Labor Relations Act to recognize that the corporate expression of “…any views, argument or opinion, or the dissemination thereof … shall not constitute or be evidence of an unfair labor practice.”
“But no matter,” notes a blistering April 12 editorial in the Wall Street Journal. Continue reading:
“Ms. Abruzzo’s memo pronounces, 74 years later, that the NLRB ‘incorrectly’ decided Babcock & Wilcox and that mandatory meetings on company time are ‘unlawful.’ She says such meetings force workers to listen to ‘employer speech under threat of discipline,’ violating their ‘right to not listen to such speech.’ ”
Abruzzo’s brazen assault on the First Amendment is at least the second time in just over a year in office that President Biden has attempted to repeal Babcock and WilcoxBy executive fiat. His so-called “Peoples’ Right to Organize Act”, or PRO Act, would have the same effect, but it remains stalled in Congress with even moderate Democrats recoiling from the audacity of its giveaways to the president’s benefactors in organized labor.
For her part, Abruzzo isn’t even waiting for the Senate-confirmed NLRB board to vote on her mandate. Apparently, she takes her cue from Biden, who’s on pace to issue almost 350 executive orders during his first term alone. Historical context: Ronald Reagan was widely criticised by the Left because he issued 381 executive orders over eight years. However, the most notable chutzpah icons of liberalism are Franklin Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. They wrote 3,721 pieces in less than three terms each, while Wilson managed to bypass Congress 1,803 more times in only two terms.
What makes the president’s actions all the more galling is that the exact opposite behavior is callously sanctioned in the public sector.
To give an extreme example in Washington, where a law permits state employee unions of government to hold a meeting for 30 minutes with every new hire. During this time, workers are pressured into joining the union that is designated the only bargaining representative at the agency they will work for.
Technically, these arm-twisting exercises are voluntary. However, this information is seldom shared with new employees. Consequently, nearly everyone attends — and more than a few leave traumatized.
The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries rejected a request from Freedom Foundation earlier in the year to present a fifteen-minute presentation that would have provided employees with an alternative fact-based assessment of their rights.
Even worse, the audiotapes of union organizers delivering false accusations against Freedom Foundation have captured them.
Other tapes show that attendees were assured by union representatives that participation in the labor movement is required for all government employees. This was despite U.S. Supreme Court rulings, including Janus v. AFSCME (2018).
The Freedom Foundation has since filed a lawsuit against the Department of Labor and Industries, as well as its assistant director of human resources, because the agency denied its request to offer an alternative to the unions’ blatant, unchallenged recruiting activities.
If it’s suddenly an illegal labor practice for a private-sector employer to require attendance at a meeting during which the implications of unionization are openly discussed, shouldn’t the same standard apply to government workers? Doesn’t a taxpayer-supported public agency have an even greater obligation to expose its new employees to both sides of a contested issue, or must a heaping dose of union propaganda suffice?
Since JanusTens of thousands have taken advantage of their new rights to refuse union dues and membership. Strongarm tactics like those employed by the state of Washington and, more recently, by the union operative appointed by President Biden to oversee the nation’s labor policy make it easy to see why.
Jeff Rhodes serves as Vice President for News and Information at Freedom Foundation. www.FreedomFoundation.com