OPINION:
In his 2020 campaign, Joe Biden promised to be the “most pro-union president you’ve ever seen” to repay the billions of dollars that labor unions shovel to Democratic candidates every election cycle.
President Biden has fulfilled his campaign promise by using the federal government to enact the unions’ agenda through regulation. The overarching goal of Mr. Biden’s regulatory onslaught is to clamp down on workplace speech to drive up union membership.
The National Labor Relations Board has been the tip of Mr. Biden’s anti-speech spear, and NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has masterminded the NLRB’s crackdown on free speech. Take employer meetings on unionization, known as EMUs, as one example.
Since the 1940s, the NLRB has allowed employers to hold mandatory workplace meetings to explain their position on unionization to employees. EMUs, unfairly derided by critics as “captive audience” meetings, allow employees to learn about their rights during unionization drives. Employees are compensated for their time, just as they are for any other workplace meeting, and the majority of union members hold a favorable view of EMUs.
As long as employers do not threaten, coerce, or promise anything to employees in accordance with Section 8(a)(3) of the National Labor Relations Act, there has been no serious legal debate around restricting EMUs. Ms. Abruzzo took a sledgehammer to this 80-year consensus with an April 2022 memo recommending that the board ban EMUs, a clear sign that Ms. Abruzzo wants to keep employees in the dark about their rights so union bosses can more easily organize workplaces. Soon after the Abruzzo memo, the NLRB’s legal arm started attacking companies that held EMUs, and blue states are following like lemmings to ban the meetings.
Instead of targeting real intimidation from union organizers, the NLRB has consistently targeted imaginary intimidation from employers. The NLRB’s long-term goal is to prevent employers from communicating with employees during organizing drives, ensuring that employees hear only from their union before voting for or against unionization.
Consider the NLRB’s new ruling against Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, which alleges that his comments in three public interviews violated federal labor law.
The complaint does not contain direct quotes from Mr. Jassy’s interviews; instead, it paraphrases his comments to paint them in the most negative light possible. One would think that direct quotes from publicly accessible interviews would be the minimum standard to accuse an individual of violating labor law, but Mr. Biden’s NLRB apparently disagrees.
In one interview, Mr. Jassy expressed his opinion that nonunionized workplaces are better off because they are nimbler at making improvements without clearing them through union bosses. The NLRB judge said that Mr. Jassy “offered no objective basis for his comments” and characterized them as a threat to Amazon workers.
News flash to the NLRB’s kangaroo court: The First Amendment still exists. Mr. Jassy expressed his opinion in public interviews with CNBC, The New York Times and Bloomberg, and he is allowed to do so. Nothing in Mr. Jassy’s measured remarks constituted a threat to Amazon employees under the law, despite the NLRB’s assertions to the contrary.
Even though Mr. Jassy did not threaten his employees, the NLRB said Amazon should post notices at all its U.S. facilities that inform employees of their rights and commit to not retaliating against them for unionizing. On the one hand, the NLRB wants to ban meetings where employers inform employees of their rights during organizing drives. On the other, the NLRB wants employers to post notices promising not to threaten employees, even though they are expressly banned from doing so in EMUs.
This raises a simple question: Does the NLRB really care about making sure employees make an informed decision about unionization, or does it care about painting employers negatively to tip the scale for the labor unions?
This attack on workplace speech is part and parcel of Mr. Biden’s ultimate goal — legalizing union harassment of workers. Mr. Biden reiterated his support for the Protecting the Right to Organize Act in his State of the Union address, legislation that would rewrite U.S. labor law to the unions’ benefit. One little-known PRO Act provision would force employers to hand over sensitive employee contact information — including phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses and shift times — to union bosses during organizing drives. If the act became legal, workers on the fence about unionization could get a 3 a.m. knock on the door from organizers attempting to “help” them make up their minds.
Mr. Biden’s devotion to labor unions has come at a significant cost — the chilling of workplace speech. If Democrats are serious about being pro-worker, they should stand up and oppose Mr. Biden’s anti-speech crusade. But as long as labor unions continue to spend billions to elect Democrats, don’t hold your breath.
• Tom Hebert is director of competition and regulatory policy at Americans for Tax Reform and executive director of the Open Competition Center.
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