Blog Post: Big Labor-Backed Senator Pushing Double Standard on NLRB Recusals
In a recent post on the Federalist Society website, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation Vice President Legal Director Ray LaJeunesse responded to demands by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) that Trump’s lone remaining current NLRB nominee recuse himself from numerous potential cases:
“Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has suggested that Emanuel should ‘also sit out any case involving the hotly contested question of whether employers can force their workers to sign class action waivers,’ because he ‘has represented parties on the class action waiver issue in a case before the board, . . . his firm is counsel in a number of others . . . and he has also co-written briefs in U.S. Supreme Court cases arguing that the agreements aren’t unlawful restraints on employees’ right to engage in collective activity.’ (Emphasis added.)
However, unless the standards for recusal are more stringent for nominees of President Trump than they were for nominees of President Barack Obama, Emanuel can ethically ignore Senator Warren’s suggestion and need not recuse himself in all class-action waiver cases, even though that is a ‘hotly contested’ issue.”
The post goes on to cite Obama NLRB Member Craig Becker, who refused to recuse himself from a case to end protections for employees who had union monopoly bargaining imposed through the coercive and unreliable “card check” scheme. The Foundation’s press release on that case can be found here. Becker had previously weighed in on the issue as counsel for the AFL-CIO but that didn’t stop him from recusing himself when the NLRB voted 3-2 to end employees’ ability to force a secret ballot vote after a union was installed through card check.
To read the whole post, please click here.
Worker Advocate Testifies Before Congress on Need for Labor Board Reforms
Under Obama, National Labor Relations Board became a promoter of forced unionism powers rather than a neutral arbitrator
Washington, DC (February 14, 2017) – This morning, National Right to Work Foundation Vice President and Legal Director Raymond LaJeunesse testified before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions. The Subcommittee, which is chaired by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), held a hearing titled “Restoring Balance & Fairness to the NLRB.”
LaJeunesse, who has worked at the Foundation, whose staff attorneys have represented thousands of employees in unfair labor practice and representation cases before the NLRB, for over forty-five years, including as Legal Director since 2001, laid out the damage done to independent-minded workers over the past eight years by the Obama NLRB. From forcing nonmembers to subsidize union politics, barring secret-ballot elections in favor of coercive card-check schemes, imposing “ambush election” rules, and gerrymandering bargaining units into “micro-units” to ensure union victories, the damage has been immense.
“I commend you for investigating the adequacy of the National Labor Relations Board’s enforcement of the rights of individual workers under the National Labor Relations Act to refrain from union associations. Unfortunately, the Board majorities President Obama appointed have in many respects denied or diminished those rights,” testified LaJeunesse.
LaJeunesse provided many recommendations to the Subcommittee on how to bring this about, first and foremost by suggesting President Trump nominate two nominees to fill the vacant NLRB seats who will defend the rights of all workers, including those who prefer not to affiliate with a labor union. Other specific recommendations made by LaJeunesse to the Committee include restoring protections for secret-ballot elections as the preferred process for “certifying” a union as the monopoly bargaining representative, more vigorously enforcing employees’ rights not to fund union politics and lobbying, undoing the Obama NLRB’s biased “Ambush Election” Rule, and ending the NLRB’s discretion to certify micro-units.
National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix commented, “As Mr. LaJeunesse laid out in his testimony before Congress, the past eight years under the Obama NLRB have been dismal ones for the rights of America’s independent-minded workers. I urge Congress to exercise its oversight powers to ensure that the NLRB returns to being a neutral arbitrator rather than, too often, an arm of Organized Labor with the goal of expanding Big Labor’s forced dues ranks.”
Foundation Legal Director Ray LaJeunesse’s commentary on Janus v. AFSCME featured on The Federalist Society Website
With free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, an Illinois state employee’s legal challenge to forced union dues and fees for public sector workers has garnered significant media attention nationwide since the petition to the Supreme Court of the United States was filed on June 6. Recently, Foundation Legal Director Ray LaJeunesse wrote a blog post on The Federalist Society’s website about the case, Janus v. AFSCME. An excerpt is below.
Twice in the past five years the United States Supreme Court has questioned its holding in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977) (6-3 decision on this issue), that the First Amendment allows a government to force its employees to pay “agency fees” to a labor organization that is their “exclusive representative” for purposes of “collective bargaining” with the government.
To read the whole post please click here.
