Unions Look to Labor Board to Reverse Bush Policy

[Omaha Steve]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124399000645979713.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

June 3, 2009

By MELANIE TROTTMAN
WASHINGTON -- Unions, uncertain about the outcome of their push for Congress to overhaul national labor law, are counting on President Barack Obama's new appointees to the National Labor Relations Board to reverse Bush-era rulings they say hamper their efforts to organize workers.

The five-member board, which supervises union elections and referees disputes between private-sector employers and employees, has a new chairman and Mr. Obama has nominated two new members with union backgrounds. The Senate must ratify these nominations, as well as a Republican nominee who has yet to be named.

Law firms are advising corporate clients to be on alert. If confirmed by the Senate, the two new board nominees -- labor-side lawyers Craig Becker and Mark Pearce -- would join longtime member and chairman Wilma Liebman to create "a majority bloc distinctly in favor of expanding the rights of unions and workers," law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP said in a report addressing issues likely to be revisited by the NLRB. "Employers must…prepare for the resulting shifts in the regulatory landscape."

Once new nominees are in place, the board will face a lengthy agenda of issues including: whether more workers whose jobs fall in the gray area between salaried management and hourly laborers should be allowed to unionize; how much freedom workers should have to use company email systems to promote union membership; how much access union organizers should have to workplaces; and what constitutes unacceptable intimidation by employers seeking to oppose union organizing drives.

"I think we can predict that the landscape will change as quickly as cases get to the board where they can overrule" precedent, said Ken Yerkes, chairman of the labor and employment practice at Indianapolis corporate law firm Barnes & Thornburg LLP.

Ms. Liebman, a former legal counsel to the Teamsters and Bricklayers unions, was named as chairman by Mr. Obama to replace the Bush-appointed chairman, who remains on the board. First appointed to the board by President Bill Clinton, Ms. Liebman later became known as the board dissenter when Bush appointees dominated. In an interview, she said the board "can enforce the law more vigorously" but is bound by constraints of the law it was created to administer and enforce.

FULL story at link.