NLRB Staff Union Claims Pro-Union NLRB Bosses Have Declared War on NLRB Employees

LaborUnionReport.com:

February 17th 2012

When discussing the National Labor Relations Board and its pro-union slant these days, few realize that the staff within the NLRB is also unionized.

In fact, according to the National Labor Relations Board Union, the union represents over 950 NLRB attorneys, examiners and support staff. It is these individuals, along with their bosses within the NLRB, who are charged with remaining neutral in employer-union disputes—which makes it all the more interesting when the NLRB’s union charges NLRB management with “trying to destroy their employees’ union.”

According to a flyer distributed by the NRLBU, NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce (a union attorney) and Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon have declared war on NLRB attorneys.

The NLRB Union claims NLRB bosses are demanding that the union permit management to unitlaterally cut performance incentives “at a whim,” as well as an 85% cut in “official time” (which is the time spent to conduct union business at taxpayer expense).

The Acting General Counsel’s and Chairman’s attack on official time is the federal sector equivalent of an attack on a private sector union security clause.

Later, the NLRBU’s flyer states:

The NLRBU urges Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon and Chairman Mark Pearce to practice what they preach and to stop trying to destroy their employees’ union.

This isn’t the first time the NLRB has had a spat with its employees’ union. In 2009, the NLRBU urged a boycott and picketing of an event featuring then-NLRB Chairman (and ex-Teamster attorney) Wilma Liebman over a dispute.

The NLRBU had been encouraging local picketing to protest the Board’s refusal to bargain with a unit of its own employees. The Union claims that the Board’s conduct shows defiance of federal law and contempt for the rights of its employees. The dispute arose in 2005, when the NLRBU filed a petition with the Federal Labor Relations Authority, the federal-sector equivalent to the NLRB, to consolidate four previously separate groups of employees. The Board opposed consolidation, but the FLRA, after considering all the evidence, agreed with the Union. After employees voted overwhelmingly in favor of consolidation, the FLRA certified the Union as the lawful bargaining representative in the new unit.

A small dose of irony, no?

By Editor