NLRB vs Its Own Union: Should Gov’t Agencies Practice What They Preach?

At first, one is tempted to cry “hypocrisy!” and move on, but this news item could be fodder for two interesting discussions. The first is about when and under what conditions public-sector actors are or ought to be subject to the same duties as private-sector actors. (Here, an administrative law judge from the Federal Labor Relations Authority concludes that the U.S. National Labor Relations Board is duty-bound to bargain in good faith with its employees’ union over a planned relocation of its main office in Washington, DC—the same way private-sector employers are duty-bound to bargain.) The second is about whether public-sector unionization is consistent with the underlying justification for political authority. (If we conceive of government agencies as providing essential services for the maintenance of the social order that justify their powers, what does that mean for government employees forming an organization whose relationship to government agencies is fundamentally adversarial and may involve deploying strategies of employee representation that undermine the functioning of those agencies?) >>>

LINK: Federal Labor Board Caught Doing What It Tells Businesses Not To Do (by Connor D. Wolf for The Daily Caller)

The main federal agency tasked with resolving workplace disputes was charged with failing to negotiate with its own employees’ union, according to reports Thursday.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) oversees a long list of various labor disputes on a nearly constant basis. The board was founded in 1935 with the express purpose of resolving workplace disputes, but has been accused in recent years of being biased in favor of unions. The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) found the board failed to negotiate with its own employees’ union.

NOTE: The FLRA ruling can be found here.

What do you think?

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