NLRB Holds Training at Union Office and Top Lawyer Forgets Details of Ambush Election Rule

Congress has held numerous hearings and passed a resolution of disapproval of the National Labor Relations Board regulation known as the “ambush election” rule due to its overt bias toward labor unions at the expense of employee and employer rights.

As I’ve previously written, the rule inappropriately eases union organizing drives by dramatically shortening the amount of  time a union election takes place, releases employees’ personal information (email, telephone number and work schedules) to union organizers, and leaves certain voter eligibility issues to be decided after an election has taken place.

But two recent events further display the pro-union bias of the Board and the haphazard nature in which the rule has been promulgated.

In preparation of the ambush election rule going into effect on April 14, the NLRB is conducting training on the details of the new election process. Guess where some of the training takes place?

As the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports, a training session will be held at a SEIU office in New York, which Jon Hyman, editor at Workforce, commented:

Does it seem a bit … disingenuous / offensive / plain-ol’-wrong … that the NLRB has chosen to train its own employees (federal employees, paid by your and my tax dollars) at the office of an organization that will be the beneficiary of these pro-union election rules? I’ll give the NLRB one thing. At least it doesn’t play hide-the-ball with its very pro-union agenda.

Even worse, the agency’s top lawyer, Richard Griffin, could not answer questions about how the rule works at a recent Congressional hearing.

Bill McMorris, staff writer at The Washington Free Beacon, reports:

Richard F. Griffin, general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), “forgot” the timeline that employers will face under new NLRB guidelines that critics have dubbed “ambush election rules.” Rep. Andy Harris (R., Md.) asked Griffin to clarify how much time employers have to respond to union organization petitions.

“Let’s just pretend that the union—because it actually understands that this deadline’s sped up—files the petition Thursday before Labor Day, by your laws that hearing has to be next Friday, right? Eight calendar days,” Harris said.

“Business days. It’s business days,” said Griffin, a former union attorney with 34 years of experience.

“You sure? It says calendar days from that hearing,” Harris said, holding up testimony from a previous House hearing on the NLRB proposal.

Griffin turned to someone off camera asking for clarification. His microphone captured a male voice saying “I forget.”

“I’m sorry, my bad: calendar days,” Griffin said.

“Let me get it straight. The General Counsel of the NLRB got that critical question wrong. You had to turn around and get—I’m amazed,” Harris said. “I now understand why it’s called an ambush election.

Despite the NLRB General Counsel inability to understand the hundreds of page rule and its blatant bias toward labor unions, the rule is set to take effect in mid April. With that, here is the NLRB PowerPoint presentation that outlines how the rule will impact union elections going forward.