Labor/Employment

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) said efforts to defund the National Labor Relations Board are an attack on workers’ rights.

House Republicans talked action as freight rail unions could strike as early as Dec. 6, choking the holiday shopping season.

GOP leaders said they are confident the Senate would support a bill to stop a strike during the holidays.

The resignation of the lone Republican on the National Labor Relations Board would essentially shut it down.

The House approved the rule for the bill, H.R. 3094, in a 239-167 vote.

Freshman Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said Friday morning that the House should approve legislation scaling back proposed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rules allowing for faster union elections, in part because the NLRB has “lost its marbles.”

Scott quoted an email, made public earlier this year by Judicial Watch, in which acting NLRB general counsel Lafe Solomon responded to an article critical of the NLRB by joking that he and a colleague should now try to destroy the European economy, having already destroyed the American economy.

“I want you to hear this clearly, I’m going to say it slowly, because we need to understand and appreciate that the NLRB has lost its marbles, without any question,” Scott said on the floor. He then read the email, in which Solomon said to a colleague: “The article gave me a new idea. You go to Geneva, and I get a job with Airbus. We screwed up the U.S. economy, and now we can tackle Europe.”

“Only in an alternate universe is this funny or does it make any sense whatsoever,” Scott said.

Mitt Romney and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) on Thursday called for the dismissal of a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) attorney following the revelation of internal emails that seem to joke about the NLRB’s negative influence on the economy.

Romney, a contender for the GOP presidential nomination, called for NLRB General Counsel Lafe Solomon to be fired, saying in a statement that Solomon’s emails revealed “a disturbing and cavalier attitude about job losses that are a direct result of NLRB policies.”

Business groups have criticized the labor board rule, which calls for quick union elections.

Sen. Lindsey Graham warned a labor board official he would go after the agency “full guns a-blazing,” documents show. 

The House Education and the Workforce Committee passed legislation Wednesday that would peg back several regulations and rulings from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). 

The mark-up of the bill, known as the Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act, was approved on a party-line vote, 23-16.

Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), the panel’s chairman and the bill’s sponsor, said the legislation was necessary to roll back the NLRB’s “activist agenda,” which is creating uncertainty for businesses across the country. Kline rejected Democratic charges that his bill would prevent union elections at worksites.

Read more...