Ending the Federal Labor Policy Swing

InsideSources discusses the National Labor Relations Board with Trey Kovacs.

Former President Barack Obama was accused by critics of unilaterally implementing an extensive labor policy agenda by going beyond what the law allowed. Now some say lawmakers should pass legislation ensuring that doesn’t happen again.

The Obama administration aggressively pursued its workforce agenda with the promise workers would benefit. The result was a pretty significant shift in federal labor policy. President Donald Trump has already done a lot to upend those policy reforms, but the partisan back-and-forth on federal labor policy is nothing new.

“For the NLRB, this is kind of what happens,” Trey Kovacs, labor policy expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told InsideSources. “It’s a highly political agency that makes decisions depending on who president is. I don’t know how much headway you can really make unless you have several consecutive Democratic presidents in a row, it’s going to get flipped back whenever there’s a change in the presidency.”

The NLRB was able to make several significant policy changes ranging from contracting to union elections. Republicans and the business community argued the board went way beyond the intent of the law — fueling a call for legislative action to clarify what the limits of the law actually are.

“I would also say they should probably think about addressing some of these policies with legislation,” Kovacs said. “If the next president is a Democrat, they’re going to do the exact same thing. They’re going to get their majority on the NLRB, takeover the Department of Labor, and reverse course again.”

Read the full article at InsideSources.