We frequently joke that the best National Labor Relations Board would be no National Labor Relations Board at all. Well, due to the government shutdown, all but 11 out of the NLRB’s 1,611 employees have been furloughed and told to go home. Color us skeptical that this development will cause an end to labor relations.
Since such occasions don’t come along every day, we decided we’d take this opportunity to go through and list some of the nuisances the NLRB won’t be able to perform until the government is open again. Among the many, it won’t be able to:
- Shake down major American job-creators and effectively force them to surrender to union demands;
- Continue decimating decades-old legal precedents established to protect workers’ rights;
- Give legitimacy to the actions of Big Labor front groups known as worker centers;
- Last but not least, these unelected bureaucrats won’t be able to issue pro-labor, anti-worker rulings federal courts must surely reject, such as the pro-unionization “poster requirement” that was stricken by multiple courts of appeal
We also take this opportunity to point out that it shouldn’t require a government shutdown to escape such overreaches. Indeed, the Employee Rights Act would provide workers with additional legal tools by which they could protect themselves rather than waiting for the NLRB to do unions’ deeds.
None of this is to say that a government shutdown is a good thing. It’s only to say there’s a silver lining to all things – for workers, it’s sidelining the NLRB.
