On Monday, April 30th, Barack Obama’s union-controlled National Labor Relations Board will be imposing its new union election rules, designed to ambush unsuspecting employers. Since unions won over 71% of the 1595 NLRB-conducted elections in 2011, the NLRB’s radical departure from past precedent is neither necessary, nor warranted. Moreover, given unions’ legal ability to deceive workers into unionizing, it is believed the NLRB’s doing union’s bidding will result in smaller companies and their employees falling prey to unionization.

While the NLRB’s purported ‘streamlining’ of its election procedures seems simple, to those who have experienced the tumultuous time when a union has targeted a company, the ability of the union-controlled NLRB to now eviscerate employers’ ability to challenge the validity of a union’s attack through a fair hearing opens the door to a drastic reduction of time an employer has to respond.

The Associated Builders & Contractors, an association of predominantly union-free contractors, sums it up this way:

Under the rule, commonly known as the “ambush” elections rule, the amount of time between when a union files a representation petition and an election takes place is reduced from the current average of around 40 days to as few as 17 to 20 days.

The NLRB achieved this drastic reduction in time primarily by:

• combining pre- and post-election appeals;
• truncating pre- and post-hearing procedures; and
• limiting the types of issues an employer can raise at a pre-election hearing. (Determining which employees are considered supervisors, and which employees constitute a potential bargaining “unit” are no longer permitted before the election takes place.)

While many larger employers have the resources to preemptively insulate their organizations from union attack, many smaller employers and their employees have suddenly become hugely vulnerable.

Over the next several weeks, a multi-part series will be posted on LaborUnionReport.com and RedState.com for both employers and employees to learn how to effectively keep unions out of their companies.

For now, however, thanks to Barack Obama’s union-controlled National Labor Relations Board, the misleadingly still waters have suddenly become even more dangerous.

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“Truth isn’t mean. It’s truth.”
Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012)

Cross-posted on LaborUnionReport.com

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