NLRB Stability Act
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Sen. Cassidy, Bill [R-LA]
ID: C001075
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Bill Summary
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of Senators Cassidy and Tuberville. The "NLRB Stability Act" - because what the National Labor Relations Board really needed was a stability injection... of corporate-friendly steroids.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** Ah, who are we kidding? This bill's primary objective is to further entrench the interests of big business at the expense of workers' rights. The sponsors claim it's about "enhancing stability" and "limiting nonacquiescence," but let's translate that into plain English: they want to make it harder for workers to challenge unfair labor practices and easier for corporations to get away with exploiting their employees.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill amends the National Labor Relations Act by adding a new section (10(n)) that prohibits NLRB orders from conflicting with court of appeals decisions in the same circuit. Sounds innocuous, right? Wrong. This provision effectively gives corporations a second bite at the apple, allowing them to appeal NLRB decisions to a more business-friendly court. The bill also "simplifies" venue rules by limiting where petitions can be filed, making it harder for workers to access justice.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** Workers, unions, and anyone who cares about fair labor practices will be negatively impacted by this bill. On the other hand, corporations, their lobbyists, and the politicians they own (ahem, Senators Cassidy and Tuberville) will be thrilled with this gift-wrapped present.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill is a symptom of a deeper disease: the systemic corruption of our political system by corporate interests. By further tilting the playing field in favor of big business, this legislation will exacerbate income inequality, erode workers' rights, and embolden corporations to engage in even more egregious labor practices.
In short, the "NLRB Stability Act" is a farce, a thinly veiled attempt to rig the system against workers. It's a legislative equivalent of prescribing a placebo to a patient with a terminal illness - it might make the symptoms look better on paper, but it won't address the underlying disease. And we all know how that usually ends...
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Sen. Cassidy, Bill [R-LA]
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 601 — Department of Labor and Related Agencies The NLRB has issued extreme interpretations of these activities, such as deter- mining that a business’s requiring its employees to be courteous to customers and one another is an unlawful infringement on the free speech rights implicit in the protected concerted activity protections in the NLRA. l Reverse unreasonable interpretations of “protected concerted activity.” The NLRB should return to the 2019 Alstate Maintenance interpretation of what does and does not constitute protected concerted activity, including listing eight instances of lawful actions by employers. Injunctive Relief and Worker Organizing Activities. Within the confines of the more reasonable definition of protected concerted activity described above, the NLRB should increase its pursuit of reinstatement injunctions. Firing work- ers engaged in concerted activity has an immediate chilling effect on organizing, but remedies under the NLRA typically come only much later and amount only to backpay. In NLRA section 10(j), Congress empowered the NLRB to obtain temporary injunctions that immediately reinstate workers to their jobs in these circumstances. This provides a more meaningful remedy to the worker and creates a significant deterrent to unfair labor practices, because prompt reinstatement will tend to reinforce the legitimacy of the organizing effort. The NLRB overwhelmingly prevails when pursuing an injunction, succeeding 100 percent of the time in 2020 and 91 percent of the time in 2021. l Increase the use of 10(j) injunctive relief. The NLRB should increase its use of 10(j) and should articulate guidelines for situations in which it intends to seek injunctive relief; the board should delegate authority to pursue such injunctions to the general counsel and the general counsel should establish a policy of considering them expeditiously in all retaliation cases identified by regional offices. Dues-Funded Worker Centers. Under current law, both labor unions and unionized employers must file financial disclosures with DOL on an annual basis to ward off potential fraud and corruption of the sort that has been seen recently within the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW). However, worker centers, which have grown in number and influ- ence enormously over the past decade, are not required to file these disclosures. l Investigate worker centers and require financial disclosures. DOL should investigate worker centers that look and act like unions and bring enforcement actions to require them to file the same financial disclosures. — 602 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Office of Labor-Management Standards Initiative. Currently, the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) may investigate potential employer mal- feasance with regard to union funds in the absence of any complaint by a worker or union but may not do the same with regard to potential union malfeasance. If OLMS has evidence that a union may be violating the law based on information available to the agency (such as annual financial disclosure reports, information developed during an audit of a union’s books and records, or information obtained from other government agencies) it should be permitted to open an investigation. It should have the same enforcement tools available for both employers and unions. l Revise investigation standards. The Office of Labor-Management Standards should revise its investigation standards to authorize investigations without receiving a formal complaint. Persuader Rule. During the Obama Administration, DOL created significant regulatory burdens for employers with respect to the advice that employers receive about union activity. As a general matter, employers who hire lawyers or other con- sultants to advise employees about union issues must file disclosure forms with the department, as must the lawyers and consultants themselves. Prior to the Obama Administration, advice provided solely to the employer required no disclosure. The Obama Administration attempted to eliminate this “advice exemption” with a directive known as the “persuader rule,” which was successfully challenged in court. In 2018, the Trump Administration formally rescinded the persuader rule. l DOL should rescind the persuader rule once again should the Biden Administration revive it. Unionizing the Workplace: Card Check vs. Secret Ballot. Under the NLRA, instead of having a secret ballot election about the decision to unionize a workplace, a union may instead collect signed pro-union cards from a majority of the employees it wishes to represent and then ask the employer and National Labor Relations Board for voluntary union recognition. That request gives the employer the option to hold a secret-ballot election or to recognize the union with- out any such election. This “card check” procedure is likely to induce employees to provide their signed cards in ways that do not accurately reflect their true pref- erences—ranging from a desire not to offend the signature requestor to a wish to avoid intimidation and coercion to signing based on false information provided by union organizers. In short, the card check procedure sidesteps many aspects of democratic decision-making that free and fair elections conducted by secret ballot are supposed to accomplish. Notably, the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board has recently proposed an esoteric legal theory that card-check
Introduction
— 603 — Department of Labor and Related Agencies decision-making is required under the law, basing this theory on an old NLRB case, Joy Silk, even though the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected mandatory card-check recognition. l Discard “card check.” Congress should discard “card check” as the basis of union recognition and mandate the secret ballot exclusively. Contract Bar Rule. Although current labor law allows a union to establish itself at a workplace at more or less any time, the calendar for any attempt to decertify a union is considerably more constrained. If a union is recognized as a collective bargaining agent, then employees may not decertify it or substitute another union for it for at least one year under federal law (the “certification bar”). Similarly, when a union reaches a collective bargaining agreement with an employer, it is immune from a decertification election for up to three years (the “contract bar”). A typical consequence of these rules is that employees must often wait four years before they are allowed a chance at decertification. Employees then have only a 45-day window to file a decertification petition; if the employer and union sign a successor contract, then the contract bar comes into play once again—meaning employees with an interest in decertification must wait another three years. l Eliminate the contract bar rule. NLRB should eliminate the contract bar rule so that employees with an interest in decertification have a reasonable chance to achieve their goal. Tailoring National Employment Rules. National employment laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)21 and the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act22 set out one-size-fits-all “floors” regulating the employment rela- tionship. These substantive worker protections often do not mesh well with the procedural worker protections offered through the NLRA’s collective bargaining process. Unions could play a powerful role in tailoring national employment rules to the needs of a particular workplace if, in unionized workplaces, national rules were treated as negotiable defaults rather than non-negotiable floors. l Congress should amend the NLRA to authorize collective bargaining to treat national employment laws and regulations as negotiable defaults. For example, this reform would allow a union to bless a relaxed overtime trigger (e.g., 45 hours a week, or 80 hours over two weeks) in exchange for firm employer commitments on predictable scheduling. Alternative Policy. While some conservatives (including the author of this chap- ter) believe that it would be a mistake to antagonize unions’ core interests, others — 604 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise argue that the next Administration should end Project Labor Agreement require- ments and repeal the Davis–Bacon Act. And while some conservatives have chosen not to address massive federal subsidies for unionized labor, others believe that current laws and regulations that pick winners and losers to the detriment of the majority of construction workers and to all taxpayers should not be ignored. Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) are short-term collective bargaining agreements that apply to construction projects. There are a few reasons that con- struction projects may benefit from a PLA, and there are many reasons that even when actively encouraged to do so public construction projects have declined to use PLAs. Among the consequences: The majority of construction firms and construction workers are not unionized and their temporary forced unionization results in large-scale wage theft; construction companies are significantly less likely to bid on projects with PLAs; and PLAs consistently drive up construction costs by 10 percent to 30 percent. The Davis–Bacon Act23 requires federally financed construction projects to pay “prevailing wages.” In theory, these wages should reflect going market rates for construction labor in the relevant area. However, both the Government Account- ability Office and the Department of Labor’s Inspector General have repeatedly criticized the Labor Department for using self-selected, statistically unrepresenta- tive samples to calculate the prevailing-wage rates that drive up the cost of federal construction by about 10 percent. The Davis–Bacon Act redistributes wealth from hardworking Americans to those that benefit from government-funded construc- tion projects. Repealing the Davis–Bacon Act would increase worker freedom and end a longstanding effective tax on American families. l End PLA requirements. Agencies should end all mandatory Project Labor Agreement requirements and base federal procurement decisions on the contractors that can deliver the best product at the lowest cost. l Repeal Davis–Bacon. Congress should enact the Davis–Bacon Repeal Act and allow markets to determine market wages. THE STATES Worker-led Benefits Experimentation. Workers depend on unemployment benefits to navigate inevitable market frictions and seek new employment oppor- tunities. But existing unemployment insurance (UI) is bureaucratic, ineffective, and unaccountable. The outdated system’s myriad failures during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for innovations that respond to recipients’ needs. The most promising avenue for innovation is to involve workers and private-sec- tor organizations more directly, freed from unnecessary bureaucratic strictures. Americans take for granted that unemployment benefits must be administered by
Introduction
— 603 — Department of Labor and Related Agencies decision-making is required under the law, basing this theory on an old NLRB case, Joy Silk, even though the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected mandatory card-check recognition. l Discard “card check.” Congress should discard “card check” as the basis of union recognition and mandate the secret ballot exclusively. Contract Bar Rule. Although current labor law allows a union to establish itself at a workplace at more or less any time, the calendar for any attempt to decertify a union is considerably more constrained. If a union is recognized as a collective bargaining agent, then employees may not decertify it or substitute another union for it for at least one year under federal law (the “certification bar”). Similarly, when a union reaches a collective bargaining agreement with an employer, it is immune from a decertification election for up to three years (the “contract bar”). A typical consequence of these rules is that employees must often wait four years before they are allowed a chance at decertification. Employees then have only a 45-day window to file a decertification petition; if the employer and union sign a successor contract, then the contract bar comes into play once again—meaning employees with an interest in decertification must wait another three years. l Eliminate the contract bar rule. NLRB should eliminate the contract bar rule so that employees with an interest in decertification have a reasonable chance to achieve their goal. Tailoring National Employment Rules. National employment laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)21 and the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act22 set out one-size-fits-all “floors” regulating the employment rela- tionship. These substantive worker protections often do not mesh well with the procedural worker protections offered through the NLRA’s collective bargaining process. Unions could play a powerful role in tailoring national employment rules to the needs of a particular workplace if, in unionized workplaces, national rules were treated as negotiable defaults rather than non-negotiable floors. l Congress should amend the NLRA to authorize collective bargaining to treat national employment laws and regulations as negotiable defaults. For example, this reform would allow a union to bless a relaxed overtime trigger (e.g., 45 hours a week, or 80 hours over two weeks) in exchange for firm employer commitments on predictable scheduling. Alternative Policy. While some conservatives (including the author of this chap- ter) believe that it would be a mistake to antagonize unions’ core interests, others
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.