2010-07-08 Supremes hand Republicans map to hobble the NLRB

2010-07-08 Arthur Fox Institute for Southern Studies \US Supreme Court\US Republican Party\National Labor Relations Board http://www.southernstudies.org/2010/07/voices-supremes-hand-republicans-map-to-hobble-the-nlrb.html Supremes hand Republicans map to hobble the NLRB Supremes hand Republicans map to hobble the NLRB  The U.S. Supreme Court in mid-June knocked down 600 decisions by the National Labor Relations Board on the grounds that only two NLRB members lacked the authority needed to issue binding decisions. While pulling the rug out from under 600 decisions may seem cataclysmic, the likelihood is that the NLRB, now up to its full complement of five members, will quickly re-issue the decisions given that they were, for the most part, relatively uncontroversial.

The case, New Process Steel v. NLRB, resolved a disagreement among the lower courts as to whether the NLRB, when reduced from five members to just two, was empowered to decide cases. So many cases had been decided by two members in the past three years as a consequence of President Bush's failure to nominate new members, and then the Senate's inability to confirm President Obama's nominations needed to bring the board up to full strength.

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The potential downside of the Supreme Court's decision is that Senate Republicans now have a roadmap to hamstring the agency they "love to hate." For all intents and purposes, the NLRB's mission is to protect the workplace rights of workers, not their employers. If in the future the Republican friends of big business can filibuster Democratic nominees or put "holds" on their nominations so as to winnow down the number of board members to just two and thereby put the board out of business temporarily. In the most recent instance, of course, "temporarily" amounted to an inexcusable three years.

&ldquo;For all intents and purposes, the NLRB's mission is to protect the workplace rights of workers, not their employers. If in the future the Republican friends of big business can filibuster Democratic nominees or put "holds" on their nominations so as to winnow down the number of board members to just two and thereby put the board out of business temporarily. In the most recent instance, of course, "temporarily" amounted to an inexcusable three years.&rdquo;   