Detroit News: Walberg introduces legislation to 'rein in' federal labor watchdog
Washington — The nation's leading labor watchdog would get an overhaul under a new two-bill package introduced Monday by Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton.
The National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal agency that supervises labor union elections, investigates allegations of unfair labor practices, and is responsible for enforcing U.S. labor law.
One bill, dubbed the NLRB Reform Act, the would change the NLRB's makeup by bumping it from five to six members and require that half represent Republicans and half represent Democrats. It also would allow parties to seek review in a federal district court within 30 days and appeal to a federal appellate court if the NLRB doesn't decide the case within a year.
A second bill, titled the Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act, would require a "non-adversarial" hearing that allows parties to identify "pre-election issues" ahead of proposed union elections that can't count as evidence of unfair labor practices and introduce waiting periods between petitions, hearings and elections.
It also would broaden acceptable bargaining units to include employees that "share a sufficient community of interest."
Walberg told The Detroit News on Tuesday that it's important for the board to do what it was set up to do: Consider the positions of both employees and businesses.
"I think they've walked away from a lot of that," he said. "So it's an attempt to rein in bureaucracy to do what they should be doing and not becoming an alternative legislative body."
He said in a statement that the board has become "hyper-partisan" and has "been focused on tilting the scale in favor of union leaders" since President Joe Biden took office.
The NLRB has taken aggressive action on behalf of workers under Biden, including telling Starbucks and Amazon to rehire workers they fired during union drives. Biden appointed Jennifer Abruzzo as general counsel, who has since leveraged new legal strategies to benefit unions and punish companies that break labor laws, including advocating against mandatory employer-led meetings aimed at convincing workers not to join a union.
The NLRB is known for its political pendulum swings as the party in power shifts. Under former President Donald Trump, the board reversed an Obama-era decision that would hold companies liable for subcontractors and franchisees that broke labor law and limited where certain union organizers can lobby fellow employees.
Walberg is not the first Michigan member who has sought major changes to how labor disputes are handled in recent years: Former Rep. Andy Levin, a Democrat from Bloomfield Township, last Congress pushed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would have dramatically changed the National Labor Relations Act.
That bill, which Biden supported, would have overridden state "right-to-work" laws, set a standard making it easier for franchise workers to organize, given the NLRB the ability to levy fines up to $50,000 against companies that break labor laws, allowed contractors to be designated as employees for bargaining and more.
The PRO Act passed in the U.S. House but failed in the Senate, which had a razor-thin Democratic majority last term. "The rules are so stacked against workers that it's very hard" to organize, Levin said at the time.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News on June 6.