by Laura Clawson, Daily Kos Labor
Last month, the National Labor Relations Board issued a new rule requiring employers to post notices informing workers of their legal rights under the National Labor Relations Act. The required posters (PDF) are available at the NLRB for employers to print themselves, and are to be posted in the same location as workplace safety and other such already-required notices.
So of course the Chamber of Commerce is suing to block the regulation:
Randy Johnson, the Chamber’s senior vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits, said the NLRB’s rule on the notices is the latest effort by the board to favor unions over businesses.“At a time when the private sector is striving to create desperately needed new jobs, it is disappointing to see that the NLRB is imposing new and unnecessary regulations on employers,” Johnson said in a statement. “The latest rule is part of the NLRB’s pattern of tipping the scale in favor of unions, at the expense of employers and employees alike.”
The Chamber contends that the regulation infringes upon employers’ First Amendment rights and violates a number of other laws, including the National Labor Relations Act.
It's like a parody: The Chamber of Commerce is seriously suing to prevent workers from being notified of rights they already have under the law, by means of a poster no one will likely read anyway. And note that the poster doesn't just tell workers that they have the right to join a union and bargain collectively, and that their employers are prohibited from trying to dissuade them from exercising their rights in specific ways. It also tells them, by the way, that they have the right not to join a union and that unions are prohibited from trying to exert pressure on them to join. But it's clear which set of information the Chamber thinks workers will respond to more strongly.
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