Gridlock at the NLRB: One Step Back, Two Steps Further Back

[Omaha Steve]

http://labornotes.org/2013/02/gridlock-nlrb-one-step-back-two-steps-further-back

February 05, 2013 / Michael J. Goldberg



Connecticut nursing home workers may see justice delayed and denied once again as their scofflaw employer, HealthBridge, seeks one more legal run-around. A recent court ruling puts in jeopardy a year’s worth of NLRB actions across the country. Photo: Belinda Gallegos.


Two developments in 24 hours last month in Washington, D.C. seem to guarantee near-paralysis at the NLRB for the foreseeable future—at least when it comes to doing anything an employer objects to.

The first, on January 24, was the disappointing deal struck by leading Democrats in the Senate with their Republican counterparts: to put off any meaningful reform of the Senate’s filibuster rules for at least two years.

That means Senate Republicans, even though in the minority, can continue to block confirmation of President Obama’s nominees to the National Labor Relations Board and other agencies the Republicans despise, like the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for as long as they have the political will to do so.

Then on January 25, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned a routine NLRB unfair labor practice decision on the grounds that three members of the Board who participated in that decision had been unlawfully appointed by President Obama a year earlier, by way of invalid “recess appointments.”

FULL story at link.

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