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WASHINGTON — The chairman of the National Labor Relations Board plans to push for new rules that would give unions a boost in organizing members, despite an outcry from Republicans and business groups who say the board is going too far.
Mark Pearce said he hopes the board will propose the rules soon, now that it has a full component of five members. President Barack Obama bypassed the Senate earlier this month to fill three vacancies.
"We keep our eye on the prize," Pearce said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Our goal is to create a set of rules that eliminate a lot of waste of time, energy and money for the taxpayers."
One change Pearce wants is to require businesses to hand over lists of employee phone numbers and emails to union leaders before an election.
He also wants the board to consider other rule changes it didn't have time to approve before it was on the verge of losing a quorum last year. That includes the use of electronic filings and quicker timetables for certain procedures.
"My personal hope is that we take on all of these things and consider each one of these rules," Pearce said. "We presume the constitutionality of the president's appointments, and we go forward based on that understanding."
Pearce's comments come just three weeks after Obama ignited a firestorm when he made the recess appointments of two Democrats and one Republican to the NLRB, which oversees union elections and referees labor-management disputes.
GOP leaders have challenged the appointments as unconstitutional, saying the Senate was not technically in recess when Obama acted. Republicans had threatened to block confirmation votes on any board nominees, saying the NLRB was making too many union-friendly decisions.
Pearce's decision to push the new rules could amplify the issue in an election year as Obama's GOP opponents accuse him of being too cozy with labor unions that plan to spend millions backing his campaign.
If the board decides to propose the new rules, they would expand on sweeping regulations approved in December that speed up the process for holding union elections at work sites after unions collect enough signatures from employees. Those rules are slated to take effect April 30.
Obama's recess appointments might not hold up in court
By Alexander Bolton
Some legal experts, including those who have sided with President Obama on other constitutional issues, think there is a good chance the courts could overturn his recent recess appointments.
Legal experts said courts could invalidate Obama’s appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) because there is scant precedent on the issue.
“It’s untested ground. If I were a judge, I could write out an opinion either way. There’s no clear precedent,” said Charles Fried, a constitutional expert at Harvard Law School who served as solicitor general under former President Reagan.
The Justice Department has argued that the pro forma sessions the Senate has held since Dec. 17 do not constitute genuine sessions of work and that the upper chamber has been, for all practical purposes, on vacation.
But Fried, who has sided with the Obama administration on challenges to the constitutionality of healthcare reform, said courts might not be willing to judge what qualifies as working sessions of the Senate, especially considering how much time the chamber spends on quorum calls lately.
“A court might very well say that we don’t want to start saying something the Senate calls a session is not a real session because not a lot of senators are around,” Fried said. “One might say that this whole year is one which is not a real session.”
