Union bosses have an air of entitlement among themselves nowadays. Over the past two election cycles, organized labor has collectively spent hundreds of millions dollars electing President Obama and like-minded Congressmen and Senators.
For their efforts, they have come to expect a sizable return on investment. And for the most part, their every wish, no matter how absurd, has been granted by the president himself.
Since Big Labor helped President Obama pass his signature healthcare legislation, union bosses have been pushing to receive an exemption from the very same law. The hypocrisy is striking, which is perhaps why the President had attempted to avoid fulfilling their request for some time. That is up and until union bosses realized how damaging the taxes associated with ObamaCare would be and started to voice their displeasure publicly. Eager to placate his most ardent supporter, Obama quietly included a new rule through the Department of Health and Human Services that will exempt some unions from one of ObamaCare’s key taxes.
According to many experts, the tax would have imposed a heavy burden on many unions, requiring them to pay $63 for each covered member and an additional $63 for each family member on a health plan. This exemption will certainly be a boon to Big Labor and its members, but the vast majority of businesses won’t be provided the same luxury. These employers won’t receive the same preferential treatment because they didn’t donate nearly one billion dollars to the President’s campaigns. This pay-to-play approach that the Obama Administration has undertaken is symbolic of all the kickbacks and backroom favors that everyday Americans have come to despise about politics. And yet, for those who follow politics closely, this particular payback is just one of many that the Obama Administration has bequeathed to the labor bosses.
Since President Obama took office he has been at the beck and call of union bosses. He has gone so far as to violate the principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The constitution explicitly states that presidential appointees require U.S. Senate confirmation, yet President Obama, a former constitutional law professor, proceeded to make “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) without the advice and consent of the Senate and while they were in session. Multiple courts have found the President to have acted unlawfully and the case is now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court for final judgment.
What is also noteworthy about Obama’s NLRB is that the so-called independent federal agency has sided with labor bosses in most every major action it has taken. President Obama broke away from a longstanding precedent by appointing members that have worked directly for some of America’s largest unions. The NLRB is supposedly a non-partisan agency, but this has hardly deterred the President. As a result, Obama’s Labor Board has often rendered decisions that are beyond reason, perhaps the most prominent of which are Specialty Healthcare, which allows for the formation of “micro-unions” and a rule creating “ambush” elections.
Under the Specialty Healthcare decision, the Obama Board produced a misguided standard that allows Big Labor bosses to gain an easy foothold into businesses. With labor bosses unable to convince a majority of workers to support the formation of a collective bargaining unit, the NLRB decision allows for the formation of small unions in workplaces which do not represent the will of the majority of workers.
Regarding the NLRB’s ambush election rule, the federal agency sought to severely limit the amount of time between when a union files a representation petition and an election takes place. This prevents employers, especially smaller ones, from communicating with employees about unionization eliminating the ability of workers to make an informed choice.
While President Obama’s pro-union agenda is certainly beneficial to a small slice of Americans, it is undermining the confidence of employees and employers and harming the economy. In order for our economy to move forward business needs stability in the law which is not served when the President doles out favors and kickbacks to organized labor at the expense of the rest of the country.
This most recent appalling act of payback by the Obama Administration to the benefit of labor bosses is the equivalent of the President giving his benefactors a get out of jail free card while the rest of the nation must abide by ObamaCare. It is a slap in the face to everyday Americans who must struggle under the new law and all the costs associated with it.
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