The National Labor Relations Board, fresh from telling Boeing it has to build planes with union workers in Washington State rather than open a factory in right-to-work South Carolina, is now (just in time for Labor Day) going to require employers to put up posters notifying employees of their right to organize a union. The NLRB press release about this is here, and a related NLRB fact sheet is here, helpfully advising employers that "Translated versions will be available, and must be posted at workplaces where at least 20% of employees are not proficient in English." No suggestion of what to do if the employees are not proficient in any other language, either. The Associated Press has a news article.
I'm all in favor of the right to organize a union, but it does seem odd that of all the many rights enjoyed by Americans, this particular one is singled out for mandatory posters. How about requiring businesses and government offices to put up posters advising Americans of their Second Amendment right to bear arms? Or just posting the entire Bill of Rights? And if the American government is going to be distributing posters advising employees of their rights to organize free labor unions, how about sending some of those posters over to China, Vietnam, and other countries in which Communist governments deny their workers those rights and thus undercut American labor?
One might think that the labor unions would be sufficiently self-interested, and efficient, at informing employees of their right to organize that they wouldn't need assistance on that front from management or government. And one might think that, given the crummy economy, the Obama administration would be wanting employers to be focusing on growing their businesses rather than on printing out new bureaucrat-mandated posters. Alas.
The one industry this new rule may be good for, other than labor unions, is the companies that sell "compliance posters," such as the businessmen at complianceposter.com. More job-creation, Obama-style.
Good for Speaker Boehner for asking President Obama to provide "a list of all pending and planned rulemakings with a projected impact on our economy in excess of $1 billion." Mr. Boehner says "the Administration's current regulatory agenda identifies 219 planned new regulations that have estimated annual costs in excess of $100 million each. That's almost a 15 percent increase over last year, and appears to contradict public suggestions by the Administration this week that the regulatory burden on American job creators is being scaled back."
