President Barack Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
is on a job-killing rampage. It’s claiming unprecedented powers far
beyond what federal law allows. Taken with Obama’s other agencies,
these executive actions paint a picture of what has become an
imperial presidency.
A federal appeal is certain once NLRB’s shocking attack on
Boeing Co. goes through the administrative process. In a
free-market society, government bureaucrats cannot dictate to a
private company where they can and cannot open factories or create
jobs. Boeing — whose general counsel was formerly one of the most
brilliant federal judges in America, Michael Luttig — should win
this court battle.
NLRB’s power grab is not limited to Boeing. It’s also
claiming authority over St. Xavier University, saying that the
school doesn’t qualify for the religious exemption to NLRB’s
authority because St. Xavier is not Catholic enough. NLRB even
cites to a 1979 Supreme Court case as giving it this authority,
when that case instead makes clear that this government agency
would be running afoul of the First Amendment by presuming to rate
the religiosity of bone fide church organizations.
Just recently NLRB came down with three other far-left
decisions. One was repealing an earlier NLRB ruling, stripping
workers of the right to promptly contest the results of a vote to
form a union. Another was ruling that employers everywhere must
post signs on forming a union, giving the appearance that
unionizing was encouraged both by the government and even the
employer. Even more disturbing, NLRB took this action on its own
initiative, not in response to a group filing a petition with NLRB,
which is how such ruling are supposed to originate.
The third and most damaging was ruling that even where
unions do not exist, employees can form micro-unions in part of a
company. This would make a mess of labor laws by creating countless
possible entities with which business owners and management must
constantly negotiate, seriously complicating efforts to have
company policies that are stable, predictable, and
profitable.
Nor will the president’s handpicked appointees allow
others to promote the free market. When Arizona and other states
recently passed laws protecting workers’ right to a secret ballot
to decide whether to form unions, NLRB filed a lawsuit to undo the
results of the democratic process. That lawsuit is ongoing
today.
And NLRB isn’t done. Even the Democrat-controlled Congress
refused to pass President Obama’s federal card-check legislation to
abolish the secret ballot. Afterward Obama’s appointees, such as
hard-line labor activist Craig Becker, argued that NLRB could
create this legislation through executive fiat without Congress.
They may yet act on this shocking claim of lawmaking
power.
Nor is this executive power grab confined to NLRB. The EPA
is promulgating sweeping new regulations, imposing expensive
mandates on everything from power plants to car mileage. The FCC
has claimed power to control the Internet, in violation of a
federal appeals court ruling. And Obamacare is proving a cornucopia
of governmental controls, with HHS issuing reams of new
regulations, further burdening employers and insurers.
And on immigration, President Obama has discovered a
wondrous new power — just don’t enforce the law. If you don’t like
the statutes on the books, ignore your oath to ensure those laws
are faithfully executed. Who needs the people’s representatives in
Congress to change the law, when you can just ignore it? Obama
might even tout the efficiency of this lawless approach.
An imperial presidency is one in which the executive
branch usurps Congress, which is the only branch with authority to
make laws, and exercises power forbidden to it by the Constitution.
President Obama is now claiming powers far beyond what any
president has before, remaking America’s economy even when Congress
refuses to go along with him.
For the sake of restoring our constitutional order, each
of these issues must be taken to court as soon as possible. And
next year the American people must replace the current occupant of
the White House with one who understands and adheres to his
constitutional role of enforcing the laws as written, and
unleashing the power of the private sector to create jobs and
restore prosperity to our nation.
Messrs. Blackwell and Klukowski are the authors
of
Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save
America.
