WASHINGTON -- In a move that will surely provoke Republicans and business interests, the National Labor Relations Board announced Tuesday morning that it will propose significant new rules for the union election process, streamlining procedures and possibly making it easier for American workers to unionize.
The rules proposed by the NLRB will undergo a public-comment period, but if adopted, the amendments will define the amount of time parties can litigate before and after an election, allow for the electronic filing of election documents, defer litigation on voter eligibility until after an election and consolidate all post-election appeals into a single appeal.
Overall, the new rules could make it harder for employers to stall elections and easier for unions to organize new members. Right now, elections typically take place within two months of organizers having gathered a sufficient number of signatures from workers -- a generous amount of time, organizers argue, that employers can use to pressure workers not to unionize. The NLRB’s new rules would certainly shorten that period, though it’s hard to say by how much.
“One of the most important duties of the NLRB is conducting secret-ballot elections to determine whether employees want to be represented by a labor union,” said NLRB Chairman Wilma B. Liebman in a statement. “Resolving representation questions quickly, fairly, and accurately has been an overriding goal of American labor law for more than 75 years.”
Union officials were quick to praise the NLRB and its proposed rules. Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the country, said in a statement that the changes would help fix a “broken, bureaucratic maze” that allows employers to stall the election process.
Full Article
Source: Huffington
The rules proposed by the NLRB will undergo a public-comment period, but if adopted, the amendments will define the amount of time parties can litigate before and after an election, allow for the electronic filing of election documents, defer litigation on voter eligibility until after an election and consolidate all post-election appeals into a single appeal.
Overall, the new rules could make it harder for employers to stall elections and easier for unions to organize new members. Right now, elections typically take place within two months of organizers having gathered a sufficient number of signatures from workers -- a generous amount of time, organizers argue, that employers can use to pressure workers not to unionize. The NLRB’s new rules would certainly shorten that period, though it’s hard to say by how much.
“One of the most important duties of the NLRB is conducting secret-ballot elections to determine whether employees want to be represented by a labor union,” said NLRB Chairman Wilma B. Liebman in a statement. “Resolving representation questions quickly, fairly, and accurately has been an overriding goal of American labor law for more than 75 years.”
Union officials were quick to praise the NLRB and its proposed rules. Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the country, said in a statement that the changes would help fix a “broken, bureaucratic maze” that allows employers to stall the election process.
Full Article
Source: Huffington
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