GOP Readies Attack Plan for NLRB
September 1, 2011
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Emboldened by tactics employed during the recent debt ceiling crisis, House Republican leaders are preparing an equally extreme assault on labor and environmental laws when Congress returns from the August recess.
In an August 29 memo to House Republicans, GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) outlines an agenda that includes the elimination of important environmental safeguards while placing sharp restrictions on the ability of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to enforce federal labor laws.
Topping Cantor’s list of so-called “Top 10 Job Destroying Regulations,” is the NLRB’s April 20 complaint against the Boeing Company. The complaint, based on Boeing’s decision to transfer 787 production work from the Puget Sound to South Carolina, has become a cause célèbre among conservative pundits, far-right bloggers and GOP presidential candidates.
According to Cantor, the Board’s complaint warrants passage of H.R. 2587, the Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act. The act would severely restrict the Board’s ability to enforce the law that prohibits companies from moving or threatening to move work in response to lawful collective bargaining activity.
In addition to the GOP’s thinly disguised union-busting agenda, there will be votes in the upcoming session on rolling back EPA air and water pollution guidelines as well as a continuing effort to lower corporate taxes, cut social programs and promote approval of deeply flawed free trade proposals.
