“Gimme Five”: Fight For A Full Labor Relations Board

[Bill USA]

http://blog.ourfuture.org/20130703/gimme-five-fight-for-a-full-labor-relations-board

Here’s a scary thought: On Labor Day, a day celebrating the contributions that the labor movement has brought Americans – the 40-hour workweek, the weekend, minimum wage – there may be no one to enforce labor law.

The National Labor Relations Board is the five-person panel that makes the final decisions on labor-related cases in the United States. The board derives its authority from the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, the same act that made mandatory a minimum wage, limitations on child labor, overtime pay, and the standard workweek.

Currently, this five-person board has only three members, with Chairman Mark Pearce’s term expiring on the Tuesday before Labor Day. That would leave the NLRB without a quorum, and working Americans vulnerable.

“Why does this important board have so many vacancies?” you ask. It’s the same reason that too many seats on the federal courts are: Republican obstructionism. The five-person board is designed to be split evenly 2-2 between Republicans and Democrats and one choice of the President’s party, meaning the current balance should be 3-2 Democrats. Yet due to GOP threats of filibuster, President Obama cannot get his nominees to even a vote on the Senate floor. When President Obama tried to sidestep the Senate mess through recess appointments, they were declared unconstitutional by the D.C. Circuit Court, which itself was functioning at diminished productivity due to Republican filibustering of the President’s nominees. FYI: The D.C. Circuit Court was only recently balanced out in May, with the 97-0 confirmation of Sri Srinivasan.

After the D.C. Circuit’s decision, many of the decisions made under the appointments have been challenged by businesses that stand to gain from their decisions being overturned. This process has left many Americans in limbo, waiting to hear from the Supreme Court on the validity of the recess appointments, and for what they have been awarded as part of their claim against companies.
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1. There were only two members when I took my case to NLRB. nt