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WASHINGTON — Rep. John Kline’s new bill to overturn a National Labor Relations Board ruling allowing quicker union elections is “downright shameful” and a piece of “anti-worker” legislation, the president of the AFL-CIO said on Thursday.
Kline’s bill, which he introduced Wednesday, would block the implementation of a June ruling from the NLRB permitting union elections to take place 10 days after workers request one. His bill would require 35 days before a vote.
On Thursday, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said the bill is the Republicans’ “latest attempt to strip workers of their rights and stop fairness in the workplace” in favor of big business.
“Rep. Kline and anyone who supports his anti-worker bill should take a moment to listen to the people [protesting] on Wall Street – not the CEOs or hedge fund managers, but rather the people standing together to protest,” he said in a statement. “What they’ll hear is a call for action to create good jobs and end the inequalities caused by corporate greed and economic injustice.”
Kline laughed off the criticism on Wednesday.
“Our view is that it’s pro-worker,” he said in an interview. “We’re trying to get people back to work. These kinds of rulings get in the way of that.”
The NLRB’s ruling would limit companies’ ability to present the case against unionization to its employees, Kline said.
“It denies employees the chance to hear both sides and make an informed decision,” he said. “That’s way, way too fast … this is terrible, terrible policy and it’s being done without Congressional action.”
The new legislation is the latest in a string of Republican bills meant to reduce government regulations to provide more stability for employers to hire new workers. It’s also the second bill in the series directed at curtailing the power of the NLRB.
In September, the House passed legislation prohibiting the NRLB from “ordering any employer to close, relocate, or transfer employment under any circumstance.” The bill was inspired by an NLRB complaint against Boeing that the airline manufacturer moved jobs to South Carolina to punish its unionized workers in Washington state.
Lawmakers are at an impasse over how to best solve the country’s jobs crisis. Obama and many Democrats want to pass a stimulus measure relying on increased government spending on construction, infrastructure and education measures, paying for it with an increase in taxes on large companies and wealthy Americans. Republicans vehemently oppose much of Obama’s plan, and Democrats are averse to supporting the Republican repeal agenda, saying it’s designed to benefit corporations and wealthy Americans.
“One of our views is, you have so many regulations … that it is adding to the uncertainty (for employers),” Kline said. “Employers are refusing to expand and hire because there is so much uncertainty. Part of that is the regulatory onslaught that is coming down that has them whipping their heads side to side … These rulings by the NLRB are especially egregious. The rushing of the union elections, the ambush elections, is an example of something we’re trying to get at and fix.”
Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.
Kline, like many conservatives, is willfully ignorant. Employers are not expanding and hiring because nobody’s buying their stuff, in turn because so many people are unemployed and even the employed are worried about their future. “Employer certainty” my rosy red patoot.
Obviously, Kline has his ideological blinders on. All he’s doing is spouting the typical Rethug talking points that are so transparently false.
If a lack of job creation was really caused by uncertainty over government regulations, nobody would have a job. Regulations are what come out of Congress every year, yet somehow we’ve been able to create jobs up until the 2008 meltdown on Wall Street.
So it must be about taxes, right? Nope, that’s also false. As tax rates on corporations and the wealthy have come down, jobs have not been created, they’ve disappeared instead. cutting taxes has nothing to do with creating jobs.
These types of bills are aimed at one thing: eliminating worker rights and the middle class, creating serfs out of the rest of us, while the top 1% are the rulers.
That’s part of what Occupy Wall Street is all about.
Kline “pro-worker”? What a laugh. To shed a little more light on the subject, the NLRB’s ruling is consistent with long established labor law under the National Labor Relations Act that authorizes the Board to order employers to return to the status quo when their move of operations has been in retaliation against their employees in exercising protected rights under their union.Even Reagan recognized this:
http://www.epi.org/blog/contrary-misinformation-campaign-nlrb-boeing/
Kline is mad like the rest of the rabid anti-worker Republican right because the anti-Union, pro-employer NLRB they enjoyed under Bush has now been restored to acting fairly and is actually protecting workers’ rights.
Well said by #’s 1, 2 and 3. I don’t know Mr. Kline personally, but it would appear that his last acquaintance with real workers was decades ago, and he didn’t like it then, either.
If he and his electoral patrons actually believed their own rhetoric, they’d know that there’s no such thing as “certainty,” and the whole rationale for treating business as if it’s something special is based on the notion of being rewarded for taking risks. “Certainty” implies a static environment of the sort that doesn’t exist, and hasn’t since the onset of industrial capitalism. One of the mantras of the few who’ve been fortunate enough not to drown in the succeeding waves of greed and corruption over the past couple centuries has been the “creative destruction” brought about by capitalism.There’s no stability or certainty implied by that phrase.
John Kline like most of the right wing Republicans is shameful..they don’t care about the middle class or the poor..only keeping there rich donors happy..
They ( Republicans) should all be fired November 2012..
Let me see if I have this straight, Ray;
If I don’t have a ring in my nose for some union hack to lead me around by, I’m not a “real worker”…is that right?
Well Ray, please count me as standing proud to be a member of whatever “worker” group you put folks smart enough to represent their own interests into.
Thanks.
Mr Kline seems to belong to a crop of dysfonic “conservative” leaders whose psychological dysfunctions convince them that there are NO other solutions to our nation’s problems but to seek to further damage or destroy the “little people” i.e. the middle class workers, who form the backbone of our nation’s economy.
Those same psychological dysfunctions leave them “truly” “believing” that their already-proven-to-fail solutions will actually have positive impacts.
To anyone who does not share their dysfunctions, who does not have the same pieces of their God-given personality locked away in internal exile, it’s clear that Rep. Kline and all his fellow would-be King Midases, not only have NOT paid any attention to the moral of the original story,…
but, given sufficient power to carry out their dysfonic policies would find their lives destroyed and the results of their efforts far closer to the old Hollies song, “King Midas in reverse.”
EVERYTHING we grant them the power to control will inevitably and rapidly turn to dust (or excrement)…
and because of their dysfunctions they will be SHOCKED if and when they discover the undeniable truth that that’s the case.
Somehow, despite MASSIVE evidence to the contrary, they will have believed that the opposite would be the case right up until the collapse they will have caused, if given the chance, and after that collapse, will continue to blame anyone and everyone but themselves for it,…
their dysfunctions making it impossible for them to own up to the consequences of their own actions.
In my experience, most people who believe the free market is king think that the only thing that matters to creating jobs is whether somebody has the capital and labor capacity to actually create the job. Demand for a product or service is irrelevant.
I’ve noticed that #6, apart from becoming a lot more shrill lately, has a predilection for doing people’s thinking for them–and getting it hilariously wrong. Good time to step back and take a breath.
I see, Swiftee… People in unions just aren’t smart enough to represent their own interests and you are?
Your intelligence, or lack of it, is really not the subject of discussion here. It is the obvious absurdity of Kline claiming that he is pro-worker. It is obvious to all who’ve commented that his legislation is a blatant attempt to put a damper on the rights of workers. And the excuse – that excessive regulations prevent job creation – is the latest excuse being put forward by the GOP. This in blatant disregard of its relative unimportance for job creation now.
Please stay on topic, Swiftee. Your union bashing is getting old.
“Our view is that it’s pro-worker.”
Just like the Republican members of a Senate committee the other day as they approved the three “free” trade bills that Obama released to them for some reason known only to him.
As I watched the committee hearing, Republican senators were explaining that the cars to be built in Korea (at the loss of how many American jobs????) were to be shipped duty-free into the U.S. for sale. The R’s said that doing without the duties we normally charge would be “good for consumers” because it would help keep the retail price down.
Except, of course, that none of the American workers who would build and buy those cars here will have the money to be “consumers” anymore.
If ignorance is bliss, Kline must be a very happy man.
Bill, you’ll excuse me if I don’t put much stock in the opinions of a fellow that takes “Academic Freedom” to mean “Freedom to collect a taxpayer subsidized paycheck for ‘tweeting’ all day” (21,600 tweets and counting!).
Misuse of tenure is an example of the sorts of abuse by organized labor Kline is working to free us from.
Swiftee – I guess tweeting by the right, like your partner Mitchell Berg at 19,000 tweets, is OK.
But those darned libs at the U better quit tweeting?
To laugh. Are you afraid of a little sunshine?
You might want to look into the University of Minnesota Regents policy on academic freedom: http://bit.ly/iaV0eT
It’s telling Bill, that you’d reprint the policy on Academic Freedom, but leave out SECTION III. ACADEMIC RESPONSIBILITY.
“Academic responsibility implies the faithful performance of professional duties
and obligations, the recognition of the demands of the scholarly enterprise.”
Somehow I wonder how 300 ‘tweets’ a day, 99% of which are dedicated to defaming one person with which you have a personal obsession fits in with any of your Academic Responsibilities.
As I say, abuse of tenure is just the sort of thing Kline is adressing by bringing common sense back to the regulation of organized labor.
By the way Bill, I wouldn’t expect you to know the difference, but no part of Mitch Berg’s paycheck comes out of the public’s pocket…yours does.
Kline should stick to something he understands. By the time workers actually ask for a union or a vote on one, they don’t need more time to listen to the arguments…they have decided they want to vote.
Delay doesn’t work but, proposing legislation to delay does please some corporate masters and help raise money.