Key Vote Alert: “YES” on Overriding the Veto of S. J. Res. 8
Key Vote Alert: “YES” on overriding the veto of S. J. Res. 8, the Congressional Review Act Resolution of Disapproval to cancel the National Labor Relations Board’s “ambush elections” rule
On Monday, May 4, 2015, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) will score the Senate’s veto override vote on S. J. Res. 8, a Congressional Review Act Resolution of Disapproval to void the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) “ambush elections” rule, which threatens American workers’ freedom of association and privacy. CEI’s Congressional Labor and Employment Scorecard can be found at CEI’s labor and employment policy project: WorkplaceChoice.org.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute supports the following employment-related resolution:
Overriding the Veto of S. J. Res. 8:
The resolution passed the Senate on 3/4/2015 and the House on 3/19/2015 and was vetoed on 3/31/2015. The “ambush elections” rule took effect on 4/14/2015.
Introduced by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), this resolution disapproves and nullifies the rule submitted by the National Labor Relations Board and published on December 15, 2014, relating to unionization procedures. NLRB Board Members Philip Miscimarra and Harry Johnson, III explain: “The Final Rule has become the Mount Everest of regulations: massive in scale and unforgiving in its effect.”
The rule imposes “quickie” union organizing elections, in which employers have little time to respond to union organizing drives and employees get little opportunity to weigh the pros and cons of unionization. It forces employers to provide a pre-hearing response within seven days, and mandates union elections to be held in as little as 13 days from the union’s filing of a petition.
By rushing the process in this way, the rule deprives people of a reasonable time to consider the effects of unionization on their workplace, a decision with long lasting effects. As a group of 18 U.S. Senators pointed out: “[T]hen-Senator John F. Kennedy stated that it was essential to allow ‘at least a 30-day interval between the request for an election and the hold of an election’ in order to ‘safeguard against rushing employees into an election where they are unfamiliar with the issues.’”
The NLRB rule also removes privacy protections for workers by requiring employers to provide employees’ personal telephone numbers and email addresses to union organizers.
Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Aloysius Hogan, who testified three times against the rule before the full National Labor Relations Board, made the following statement:
“This resolution seeks to defend legitimate debate and expression regarding workers’ freedom of association, specifically debate about whether workers want to pay union dues and relinquish their freedom of expression in favor of a union’s monopoly on bargaining. The ill-conceived National Labor Relations Board rule foists an unfair ‘Vote now; understand later’ procedure on workers. In this digital age, we should be safeguarding workers’ privacy, not wrenching private information from workers against their will.”
The preferred vote is:
- YES on overriding the veto of S. J. Res. 8, the Congressional Review Act Resolution of Disapproval to cancel the National Labor Relations Board’s “ambush elections” rule.