Huffingtonpost – April 12
Today Congress essentially told working Americans to drop dead. House Republicans pushed through a dangerous bill that would paralyze the National Labor Relations Board, blocking the only path that workers have to workplace justice.
H.R. 1120, the “Preventing Greater Uncertainty in Labor-Management Relations Act,” is designed to advance a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decision, known as Noel Canning v. NLRB, challenging the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s recess appointments to the board.
Under the decision, the NLRB only has one Senate-confirmed member – Chairman Mark Pearce, a Democrat whose term expires this August.
Now H.R. 1120 seeks to freeze all activities of the NLRB that requires a full quorum, or three members. It would also bar the NLRB from enforcing any decisions it has made since Jan. 4, 2012, when Obama made those disputed recess appointments.
How did we get here? The blame mainly falls on the broken Senate rules.