In a decision issued late last year the National Labor Relations Board provided the perfect example of its endemic bias in favor of organized labor during the Obama Era.
In 2015 the board shortened the period for unions to announce and then hold a representation vote, what were then called the “Ambush” election rules. Also, included in the rule were new procedural requirements.
One of them was that the employer must serve both the NLRB and the union with the official voter eligibility list sufficiently in advance of the election.
In a representation vote held last year, a company’s employees voted 91 to 54 against the union. The union then filed an objection with the NLRB asking that the election be set aside and a another vote held because the employer failed to send the union a copy of the voter eligibility list.
The union did receive the list, and received it on a timely basis, points out Daniel B. Pasternak, an attorney with the law firm of Squire Patton Boggs. The employer sent it to the NLRB, but not to the union. The NLRB then sent the list to the union on a Monday, the first business day after it was due.
The two board’s two Democrats ruled in favor of the union. Dissenting was the lone Republican member, Phillp Miscimarra, who was later named NLRB chairman by President Trump.
He accused the majority of lightly setting aside unequivocal election results as well as creating a double standard. Just a few months earlier the board’s Democrat majority ruled in favor of a union, even though it had similarly failed to comply with the rule’s technical requirements.
Miscimarra pointed out that there was “not a scintilla of evidence that the union’s timely receipt of the voter list from the [NLRB regional office], rather than from the employer, affected the results of the election.”