Obscure agency is tool of union power-grab

Jimmy Hoffa and the boys have changed the rules of airline union elections, and
now are rubbing their hands together in anticipation of achieving one of their
Holy Grails — the increased prospects of unionizing Delta Airlines in the wake
of its merger with Northwest Airlines.

One obstacle standing in their way is today’s Senate vote on S.R. 30, by Sen.
Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), which would reject the new election rules and restore
75 years of precedent on how union elections are held in the railroad and
airline industries.
 
The stage was set for this showdown when, on May 11, 2010, the little-known
National Mediation Board (NMB) finalized regulations that changed union
organizing elections in the railroad and airline industries from requiring a
majority vote of all employees who would be unionized to a majority vote of all
those who participate in the election.
 
Union organizers complained for years that the majority-rules provisions
inhibited their attempts to organize under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), which
governs railroads and airlines. These complaints led President Carter to
appoint a panel to look at the issue of union elections under the RLA. Carter’s
panel concluded that the election procedure could only be amended by Congress
and that the NMB did not have statutory authority to act.
 
More than 30 years later, the Democratic Party majority on the NMB has gone
forward and changed the election procedures to help its union masters fill
their coffers.
 
Ironically, in spite of union whining about the previous 75 years being unfair,
more than 65 percent of all employees covered under the RLA are unionized,
clearly showing that the previous election obstacle is anything but
insurmountable. By comparison, only around 7 percent of the private-sector
workforce that works under the National Labor Relations Act is unionized.
 
A primary reason for the establishment of the majority rule for the RLA is that
there is not a mechanism within the RLA for workers to change unions. Once a
union is in, it is in, and workers are pretty much stuck with it. As a result,
the RLA union election process erred on the side of making certain that
affiliation with a specific, or any, union was the will of a majority of those
who would be represented.
 
Over the past 75 years, the RLA has worked as a means of forcing labor and
management collaboration in order to keep the goods and services that our
nation depends upon moving food and services over fixed rail and through
airline hubs with minimal disruption.
 
In this role, the NMB has traditionally been somewhat collegial with Democrat
and Republican appointees, working together to solve disputes and help those
they regulate mediate their labor disputes in a manner that rarely resulted in
debilitating strikes.
 
However, as Big Labor, which is beset by declining memberships and skyrocketing
pension obligations, gets increasingly desperate, its appointees to the NMB are
aggressively seeking to provide their benefactors an advantage. Bush appointee
and NMB Chairwoman Elizabeth Dougherty wrote in her dissent to the new rule
that making the change “would be an unprecedented event in the history of the
NMB.”
 
Dougherty added, “[T]his independent agency has never been in the business of
making controversial, one-sided rule changes at the behest of only labor or
management.”
 
Today, the Senate will vote on whether to reject this blatant power-grab. Let’s
hope they have the courage to do it.

 
Rick Manning is the communications director of Americans for Limited
Government and formerly served as the public affairs chief of staff for the
U.S. Department of Labor and nine years as a lobbyist for the National Rifle
Association.