The National Labor Relations Board issued a new rule last week that it says reduces unnecessary litigation and delays related to election procedures. Opponents, including those in the healthcare industry, argue the new rule speeds up union organizing efforts and restricts employers.
The new rule, scheduled to take effect on April 30, 2012, shortens the period between when an election petition is filed and the election. It also limits which election-related issues can be heard by hearings officers and has relegated all appeals to be scheduled after elections take place.
The election procedure amendments in the final rule are just a few of the amendments the board had been considering. A draft of the rule released last summer caused an uproar. The board received more than 65,000 comments on the proposed rule. As a result of some of the issues brought up by commenters, the NLRB said its final rule addresses some of the less controversial of the proposed amendments while tabling the others for later deliberation.
“The rule (is) really designed almost exclusively to permit unions to have a better opportunity to organize and increase their numbers,” said G. Roger King, partner at Jones Day, a nationwide law firm. King helped to write the Society for Human Resource Management’s comments about the NLRB’s proposed rule changes.
King said he thinks this latest rule is part of a four-part strategy coming from organized labor’s camp. He cites NLRB’s final rule released last week as well as the organization’s final rules on determining unit size, new poster requirements informing employees of their rights to unionize and the consideration by the Department of Labor of revising its interpretation of the advice exemption in the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act.
[See also: NLRB decision changes how units are determined; NLRB requires employers to post unionization rights; Labor Department accused of supporting 'union agenda'.]
“When you put all those together, at a 50,000 foot level, the game plan would appear to be for organized labor an opportunity to increase their market share and to improve their roughly 7 percent standing in the private sector,” he said. “Healthcare employers are going to be particularly vulnerable.”
“In many parts of the country, if not most, the healthcare employer – the hospital – is the largest employer in the community and when you add to that long-term care facilities, the presence by way of number of employees for the healthcare community is very high,” he explained. “It’s the fastest growing or has been one of the fastest growing segments of our economy…So organized labor obviously is aware of that and they have targeted and will target more healthcare facilities.”
Even though the board issued a final rule on the less contentious of the proposed rule changes, many, including those in the healthcare industry, are still in opposition. Almost as soon as the final rule was announced, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States and the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the NLRB to stop the final rule from going into effect.
The chamber’s lawsuit claims the final rule is contrary to the National Labor Relations Act and the first and fifth amendments of the U.S. Constitution and that it violates the Regulatory Administrative Procedures Act.
The Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA), a national advocacy group for operators of senior living communities and their clients, will be adding its voice to those already opposing the moves NLRB has been making, said Paul Williams, senior director of government relations at ALFA.
“You’re looking at an industry – everybody thinks of the big guys – but most assisted living (companies) are probably medium to small operators,” Williams said. “This is going to really throw them for a loop because they’re not going to be nuanced in a lot of these election matters. They’re going to have to, in a very quick time, be able to locate attorneys or people like that that are well versed, but at the end of the day, what’s really bad is that even if they do all this they still might not have the chance to bring these issues forward. It will be more impactful for them because they have a huge learning curve right now. A lot of them are just beginning to learn about this.”
The SIEU did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.
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