National Small-Business Group Seeks Legal Recourse in NLRBs Ambush Rule
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), with the Texas Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), has filed an appeal to overturn a court decision upholding a new union-organizing timeline.
A rule issued by the National Labor Relations Board accelerates the schedule by which workers can file a petition to hold a union election and the election itself. The rule, which became effective April 14, has been dubbed the Ambush Election Rule by opponents who say it robs businesses of proper time to respond to such petitions.
In the rule’s first three weeks, observers noted significant changes in the labor landscape, including an uptick in the number of petitions filed to unionize—167 in 2014 compared to 209 in 2015.
The NFIB and the ABC challenged the Ambush Election Rule in federal court. The court issued a decision last week stating that the rule did not violate the National Labor Relations Act. The NFIB and ABC appealed the decision to the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Karen Harned, Executive Director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, said the organization was disappointed.
“Despite the NLRB’s statutory charge to act as a ‘neutral arbiter,’” she said, “their ambush election rule heavily favors unionization over businesses and denies employers and employees their rights to weigh both options.”
She described the rule as a “very badly disguised effort on the part of the federal government to rig the outcome of union elections in favor of organized labor” and a “clear violation of Congress’s intent.”
The rule could reduce to as few as 10 days the process of filing a petition for a union election and holding an election. In an analysis done by Littler’s Workplace Policy Institute shortly after the rule went into effect, the average span of time from petition to election was 25 days; the quickest turnaround was 10 days.
For small businesses, Harned said “it could take 10 days just to find a labor lawyer and get a meeting. They would have very little time to educate their employees on how unionization could affect them, including the impact of union dues on their paychecks.” S