Free Republic

<p>WASHINGTON — With union membership on the decline, labor leaders are getting more creative - and some say more desperate - to boost sagging numbers and rebuild their waning clout.</p> <p>Unions are helping non-union fast food workers around the country hold strikes to protest low wages and poor working conditions. They are trying to organize home day care workers, university graduate students and even newly legalized marijuana dealers. Members of a "shadow union" at Wal-Mart hold regular protests at the giant retailer, which long has been resistant to organizing.</p>

After a contentious fight over some of President Obama’s nominees, the Senate confirmed five members to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).On Tuesday, the Senate voted to clear all five nominees — Harry Johnson III, Philip Miscimarra, Nancy Schiffer, Kent Hirozawa and Mark Pearce.Republicans agreed to hold up-or-down votes on the NLRB nominees as part of a deal to avoid Senate rule changes limiting the minority's right to filibuster executive branch nominations. Two of the NLRB nominees confirmed were GOP picks — Johnson and Miscimarra — and Schiffer, Hirozawa and Pearce were Obama's nominees. As part of the deal, Obama...

After a contentious fight over some of President Obama’s nominees, the Senate confirmed five members to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). On Tuesday, the Senate voted to clear all five nominees — Harry Johnson III, Philip Miscimarra, Nancy Schiffer, Kent Hirozawa and Mark Pearce. Republicans agreed to hold up-or-down votes on the NLRB nominees as part of a deal to avoid Senate rule changes limiting the minority's right to filibuster executive branch nominations. Two of the NLRB nominees confirmed were GOP picks — Johnson and Miscimarra — and Schiffer, Hirozawa and Pearce were Obama's nominees. As part of the...

The Senate voted 64-34 Tuesday to end debate on the nomination of Kent Hirozawa to serve on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). That vote sets up eight hours of debate time, which could be waived to allow a quick vote on the nomination. After Hirozawa, the nominations of Nancy Schiffer and Mark Pearce to join the NLRB will follow. More than 10 Republicans voted with Democrats to advance Hirozawa's nomination. Republicans agreed to hold up-or-down votes on President Obama’s NLRB nominations as part of a deal to avoid Senate rule changes limiting the minority's right to filibuster executive branch...

President Barack Obama gave the Senate just one day to vet his new nominees to the National Labor Relations Board. The White House presented the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) with vetting documents for former AFL-CIO lawyer Nancy Schiffer and NLRB Democratic lawyer Kent Hirozawa on the eve of their confirmation hearing, according to Senate sources. Federal law mandates that NLRB nominees undergo tax, criminal, and conflict of interest background checks performed by the IRS, FBI, and Office of Government Ethics, respectively. The HELP committee rules require the White House to turn over vetting documents at...

The Tuesday Senate deal cut by Republicans and Democrats on Tuesday to avoid the “nuclear option” just keeps getting better and better…for union bosses. You may recall that on Tuesday, the only “victory” that Republicans could lay claim to (in exchange for their giving Harry Reid nearly everything Democrats wanted) was that two of Barack Obama’s constitutionally-challenged “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board would be let go. Well, as it turns out, while Operating Engineers’ chief counsel Richard Griffin is being tossed from his seat on the NLRB as a member, he is now being offered the position...

RICHMOND, Va. – A third federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that President Obama´s recess appointments of three National Labor Relations Board members was unconstitutional. A divided three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals joined federal appeals courts in the District of Columbia and Philadelphia in ruling that the Senate wasn´t really in recess when Obama filled the vacancies during an extended holiday break in January 2012. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the D.C. case. However, the legal dispute may have been resolved politically. Obama on Tuesday nominated two new NLRB appointees to replace those

Sen. John McCain spent the weekend negotiating with Majority Leader Harry Reid on a deal to avert Reid's threatened use of the "nuclear option" to change Senate rules to eliminate filibusters on Presidential nominations. Through his efforts, McCain was able to secure a complete GOP capitulation on 7 pending nominations. Reid secured all the benefits of exercising the "nuclear option" without the political cost of actually using it. Under the McCain deal, the GOP will provide enough votes to secure the 60 votes needed for cloture and proceed to final consideration of the 7 nominees. In exchange, Reid agreed to...

Bowing to an ultimatum, Senate Republicans agreed Tuesday to drop objections to key Obama administration nominees, delivering a victory to Senate Democrats who said they will shelve — for now — their own plans to change the rules and curtail filibusters. The last-minute deal, announced just before the Senate was slated to hold a critical test vote, still leaves Democrats able to employ the so-called “nuclear option” and change the filibuster rules later this year if they think Republicans are obstructing appointments unfairly. Republicans said they got President Obama to withdraw two controversial nominees to the National Labor Relations Board,...

In 2005, then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to end the filibuster for judicial appointments by forcing a mid-session rule change on a majority vote, an act that would have ended two centuries of precedent. Before he could act, though, the Gang of 14 arose, led by Republican John McCain, to preserve the senatorial tradition, brokering a deal that left conservatives fuming by depriving Frist of his partisan majority. Eight years later, with Harry Reid threatening to take the same action on executive-branch appointments, where is that Old Gang of Ours? According to NBC, at least McCain might be riding...

In the courts of law and public opinion, congressional Republicans increasingly accuse President Barack Obama of exceeding his constitutional authority for the benefit of special interests, most recently by delaying a requirement for businesses to provide health care for their workers. In one instance, Senate Republicans formally backed a lawsuit challenging the president’s appointment of three members of the National Labor Relations Board without confirmation. The Supreme Court has agreed to review a ruling in the case, which found that Obama overstepped his bounds. Most recently, the White House’s decision to postpone a key part of the president's health care...

Cablevision has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in an investigation by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) about complaints involving 22 former workers that were allegedly wrongfully terminated. This battle between the media giant and the Communications Workers of America is hardly new information as they have been fighting for the past year, but this most recent move is telling specifically because of what it implies about the authority of the NLRB. A different case, National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, a court is considering the idea that the NLRB’s members, or at least 3 of them,...

Last week, we learned a little more about President Obama’s nominee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). We started the week knowing that Richard Griffin is a defendant in an embezzlement and racketeering lawsuit. He is named in the portion of the suit dealing with a cover up. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Griffin is named in a federal complaint filed in October by 10 members of IUOE Local 501, out of Los Angeles, which describes a ‘scheme to defraud [the local] out of revenue, cost savings and membership,’ by means of kickbacks, bribery, violent threats and...

LOS ANGELES, May 29, 2013 —President Obama is drowning in corruption scandals. Whether you believe he is an innocent victim, incompetent bungler or nefarious schemer, one thing is certain. These scandals will not disappear just because he and his supporters want them to. We asked the question in January,is President Obama corrupt? “Solyndra, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the NLRB suing Boeing, and Lisa Jackson’s EPA emails are all serious scandals involving government corruption at the highest levels. At the minimum they show Obama to be ignorant or indifferent to what’s going on in his own administration.” Those words appeared here...

All 45 GOP senators signed a brief calling Obama's appointments an unconstitutional abuse of power. The Senate GOP conference has asked the Supreme Court to invalidate President Obama's January 2012 recess appointments as an unconstitutional abuse of power. All 45 Repubican senators on Tuesday signed on to a brief arguing that Obama overstepped his authority in naming members to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) while the Senate was technically still in session. “The president’s decision to circumvent the American people by installing his appointees at a powerful federal agency while the Senate was continuing to hold sessions, and without...

The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals struck a huge blow against a much-abused presidential power yesterday in invalidating Craig Becker's 2010 appointment to the National Labor Relations Board. I think it's great news -- the recess appointment is an outdated accommodation for the executive branch, and no president from any party should have such power...But bear in mind that although this decision does resemble a recent one by the D.C. Circuit, it isn't about Obama's flagrantly illegal appointments to the NLRB from last January. This calls nearly all recess appointments into question, and it gives the Supreme Court a...

A second appeals court has joined the D.C. Circuit in ruling that President Barack Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional, concluding that some board actions taken in the wake of those appointments were also invalid. The issue has far-reaching implications for both the NLRB and other boards, including Obama’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has been a frequent target of conservatives and whose director was a recess appointment. The 2-1 decision Thursday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (posted here) found that the presidential recess appointment power is limited to breaks...

Labor is mounting an all-out push to fill the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as the agency faces the prospect of being sidelined for the rest of President Obama’s second term. Unions of all stripes have told Senate Democrats that they need to move on all five of Obama's nominees to the labor board, even if it takes a controversial change to filibuster rules to make it happen. “Without this, there's nothing [to protect workers],” said Larry Cohen, the president of the Communications Workers of America. (CWA) “It's a floor and now the floor is caving in as well.” The...

If you’ve been watching President Obama react to this week’s government scandals, you’ve probably noticed something. Whenever things go south, it always seems to happen in some agency that President Obama doesn’t actually control — an agency that is “independent,” either in the strict legal sense or in a more informal one. This week, a lot of things have gone wrong in the federal government, and Obama suddenly seems to control less of his administration than ever before. In fact, in asserting the independence of every major agency that screws something up, Obama is making a strong case that we...

A federal appeals on Tuesday court struck down regulations that would require posters about union rights in the workplace. The court said the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) violated the First Amendment when it mandated that businesses place notices in the workplace and on their company websites informing employees of their rights to unionize. Business that failed to comply would have faced charges of promoting “unfair labor practices.” Industry groups, which quickly challenged the rule after it was issued, cheered the ruling. Jay Timmons, the president and chief executive of the National Association of Manufacturers, pledged to remain vigilant against...