Trumka hails new NRLB union election rule

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka hailed a new National Labor Relations Board union elections rule designed to streamline the process. The rule, several years in the making, also set off a partisan uproar.

NLRB Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce said the new rule “will modernize the representation case process and fulfill the promise of the National Labor Relations Act.”  It will take effect on April 14.

The new rule lets unions and companies file documents electronically. It tells both employers and unions when to file needed documents and sets deadlines for receipt of information both sides need to participate in election campaigns and appeals. It also consolidates complaints about the election into one complaint to be filed after the vote. 

The rule requires employers to provide available personal phone numbers and e-mail addresses, as well as home addresses, to the eligible-voter lists they must give to the board, to be passed on to the union, after a verified representation election request.

Trumka called the changes “modest but important.” They’ll “help reduce delay in the process and make it easier for workers to vote on forming a union in a timely manner.”

Harvard labor law Professor Benjamin Sachs pointed out another way the NLRB streamlined the election process: Letting the board’s regional director in the area where the vote will be held “decide which, if any, voter eligibility questions should be litigated before an election is held.”

This marks a shift from prior practice under which voter eligibility questions had to be litigated prior to the election, even if they weren’t relevant to the question of whether an election should be held, added Sachs, a former Service Employees assistant general counsel.

Both NLRB members and U.S. Senators involved with labor issues got into a partisan battle over the new rule. Republican senators said they would try to repeal it when they take over.

“The rule will help to address the unnecessary delays and frivolous legal challenges that keep workers from getting a fair, up-or-down vote in the current union election process,” said retiring Senate Labor Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.  “Implementing this rule will support the board’s mission to ensure workers are able to participate in fair elections within a reasonable period of time. This will benefit both workers and employers and should not be a partisan issue.”

But Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who will chair the Labor Committee in the new 114th Congress, and incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., repeated GOP complaints about “an ambush election” rule. Alexander plans to try to repeal it.

“The ‘ambush election’ rule will sacrifice every employer’s right to free speech and every worker’s right to privacy for the sake of boosting organized labor, and I believe a new (Republican) majority in the Senate will vote to disapprove this rule,” he said.

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