http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/09/nlrb-white-house-muzzled-_n_833354.html
The Huffington Post March 9, 2011
Ryan Grim
NLRB: White House Muzzled Us In Budget Debate
WASHINGTON -- When House Republicans targeted the budget of the
National Labor Relations Board last month, the agency shot back,
warning that such cuts would force it to largely cease operations
for an extended period of time, creating a backlog of thousands of
cases.
It was one of the few counterattacks from the Obama
administration, which was otherwise busy proposing its own cuts
and endorsing the Republican call for slashing spending -- and it
didn't last long. The White House demanded that the NLRB scrub the
statement defending the agency from its website, an NLRB
spokesperson told The Huffington Post.
The link to the statement, issued Feb. 18, can still be found on
the website, under the heading: "Top NLRB officials respond to
House budget proposal." But click through and a new statement,
dated Feb. 22, appears: "The content in this statement has been
removed. For further information on this subject, please see the
President's Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) regarding the
budget, which can be found on the OMB website."
The Office of Management and Budget, an arm of the White House,
reached out to the NLRB and told the agency to back off and take
down the statement, according to the NLRB spokesperson.
OMB spokeswoman Meg Reilly said it is the job of the White House
to comment on legislation. "Administration positions on proposed
legislation are provided by the White House," Reilly told HuffPost
in a statement in response to the NLRB charge. "However, Agencies
are welcome to work with members of the public, press and Congress
to provide factual information about implications of proposed
legislation."
Reilly said that the White House had already made its position
clear on the House Republican budget proposal. "In the case of
H.R. 1, the President has stated that it is not something he would
sign as it's currently written. But we're confident that we can
work with both sides of the aisle to craft a compromise that cuts
spending without undermining our economic recovery."
Both Reilly and the NLRB spokesperson said that the OMB had
earlier sent around guidance to all agencies advising that they
not comment, instead allowing the White House to speak for the
entire administration.
The White House pushback against the NLRB would sound familiar to
Wisconsin demonstrators. The Democratic National Committee's
Organizing for America, the group that is a remnant of Obama's '08
campaign operation, initially got strongly behind the pro-labor
protests. But after the GOP criticized the White House for its
involvement, an administration spokesman told The New York Times
that "the White House had done nothing to encourage the
demonstrations in Wisconsin," as paraphrased by reporter Jackie
Calmes.
"This is a Wisconsin story, not a Washington one," Dan Pfeiffer,
the White House communications director, told Calmes. "False
claims of White House involvement are attempts to distract from
the organic grassroots opposition that is happening in Wisconsin."
Before the NLRB statement was taken down, Washington Post labor
columnist Harold Meyerson used a piece of it in his column
connecting the funding attack on the NLRB to the effort to strip
collective bargaining rights from public workers in Wisconsin. "In
a statement last Friday, NLRB Chairman Wilma Liebman and Chief
Counsel Lafe Solomon wrote that it would require the board to
furlough all of its 1,665 employees for 55 days between now and
the end of the fiscal year. They estimated that it would increase
by 18,000 the backlog of cases before the board," Meyerson wrote.
Reilly, the OMB spokeswoman, said that all federal agencies were
asked to allow the White House to respond to the budget cuts
rather than responding themselves. But on Tuesday, the
administration came under fire from a Democratic senator who gave
voice to rising concern that the White House is refusing to engage
Republicans over budget cuts.
"Why are we doing all this when the most powerful person in these
negotiations -- our president -- has failed to lead this debate or
offer a serious proposal for spending and cuts that he would be
willing to fight for?" Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said on the Senate
floor Tuesday.
Manchin is up for reelection in 2012 and is considered one of the
Senate's most conservative Democrats. But liberals are unhappy
with the president's lack of leadership on the issue, as well. "I
would hope that the president does engage in this important
discussion," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on C-Span Wednesday
morning when asked about Manchin's charge.
The GOP attempt to defund the NLRB is just one front in a campaign
against the agency. The NLRB is handling at least four challenges
from Republican lawmakers questioning the agency's
decision-making, enforcement and advertising policies.
While the NLRB took its self-defense down from its website, it
remains cached in Google. Below is the statement scrubbed by the
White House:
Top NLRB officials respond to House budget proposal
The House of Representatives is expected to vote today or
tomorrow on a Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government
for the remainder of FY 2011. National Labor Relations Board
Chairman Wilma B. Liebman and Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon
issued the following statement on the impact of that proposal:
"The House of Representatives is expected to soon vote on a
funding proposal that contains drastic cuts to several federal
agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board. The
proposal would eliminate $50 million from this small
administrative agency, or 18% of its total annual budget. Because
the reduction would be squeezed into the final 7 months of the
fiscal year, the cuts would be felt even more deeply -
representing the equivalent of one-third of remaining 2011 funding.
Nearly all of the agency's budget is spent on salaries and
rents; there are no programs to eliminate or postpone. The only
way to meet this extreme and immediate reduction would be to
furlough all of the NLRB's 1,665 employees for 55 workdays, or
nearly three months, between now and the end of September. The
great majority of these employees work far from Washington D.C.,
in 51 local offices, where every NLRB case begins. The economic
impact of this cut would be felt by families and communities in 33
states.
If enacted, the House proposal could force the NLRB to
curtail all agency operations, including investigating alleged
illegal practices by private sector employers and unions,
conducting workplace elections, and helping to settle
election-related disputes. Regulation of a broad range of conduct,
such as unlawful lockouts of workers, termination of union
organizers, refusals to bargain with unions selected by workers,
unilateral changes to contract provisions covering such things as
health insurance and pensions, unlawful strikes, picket line
violence, and secondary boycotts, would be stalled if this
proposal were adopted.
The delays would occur at a great cost to working people and
responsible employers trying to survive in this difficult economic
climate, and would have the potential to destabilize relations
between labor and business. The severe cuts would also curtail the
ability of the agency to restore jobs to people who were illegally
fired. Charges of illegal discharges account for a significant
portion of the Agency's caseload, and in just the last three
years, the NLRB won 6,814 offers of reinstatement and obtained
over $351 million in backpay for illegally discharged employees.
We are certainly aware of the tough economic times that all
Americans are currently facing; they are reflected every day in
our cases across the country. Our agency seeks to ensure that
every tax dollar is well-spent, and has continually looked for
efficiencies wherever possible in technology and staffing. These
efforts are succeeding in achieving notable reductions in case
backlogs and turnaround times while also improving case management
and making more information available to the public. Rather than
assist or accelerate those efforts, however, this proposal would
be counterproductive, even reckless. At the end of the budget
cycle, the backlog of cases would have grown, perhaps by 18,000,
and turnaround times would have increased, without lasting
efficiencies in return.
This proposal would have another effect: It would undercut
the agency's momentum just as the Board returns to health after
more than two years of vacancies, and as the Acting General
Counsel spearheads a number of initiatives, including one that is
bringing speedier resolution to charges of illegal discharges. The
NLRB's reinvigoration was examined in a hearing called by the
House majority last week, which featured critics and advocates,
and underscored the long history of controversy involving this
agency. Fortunately, an even more draconian House proposal that
would have eliminated all NLRB funding for the remainder of the
year was defeated during debate on amendments on Thursday,
although it disturbingly garnered 176 votes. We hope that as the
budget debate moves into the Senate, a serious discussion about
these important issues will occur."
The National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal
agency vested with the power to safeguard employees' rights to
organize and to determine whether to have unions as their
bargaining representative. The agency also acts to prevent and
remedy unfair labor practices committed by private sector
employers and unions.
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