Now It’s Conservatives, Not Unions, Bashing the NLRB

From the looks of things, organized labor isn’t going to kick around the National Labor Relations Board quite so frequently or hard anymore.

In fact, an intriguing switch is taking place among the agency’s opponents.

Unions are becoming less critical, especially of appointments made to the NLRB by President Bush. At the same time, conservatives and management people are increasingly antagonistic toward the board and Bush’s appointees.

The switch is important because the NLRB has a tremendous influence on labor-management relations. It enforces federal labor laws and decides such critical issues as whether and when workers can vote on union representation and whether unions or companies have committed illegal labor practices.

That turnabout doesn’t mean that the powerful agency is becoming pro-union. Far from it. But at least it is no longer unabashedly anti-union.

Unions have blamed many of their setbacks in recent years on the numerous pro-management decisions made by the NLRB when it was headed by Donald R. Dotson, an appointee of President Reagan.

But now, led by former Chairman Dotson, some ultra-conservatives have moved into the NLRB-bashing role that unions played with far more justification during the Reagan era.

With the help of Dotson, his law partner, the influential Washington attorney Francis T. Coleman, has written to several business leaders complaining angrily that President Bush seems to be forgetting that old adage, “to the victor belongs the spoils.”

Despite Bush’s victory last November, Coleman and Dotson sounded exasperated, complaining that the president’s four NLRB appointments over the past several months indicate that “our side is losing” the “war currently being waged (between liberals and conservatives) for the philosophical control of the labor board.”

The two embittered men make it sound as though somehow unions are in the catbird seat in Washington these days. In truth, of course, unions are weaker than they have been in decades and certainly do not have a friend in the White House.

Nevertheless, the Coleman-Dotson letter urges a massive, nationwide campaign to stop the “sellout” of the NLRB to unions and their allies, a process that they charge began during Reagan’s second term when the current chairman, Kenneth Stephen, replaced Dotson.

The former chairman and his associate are among the most vituperative critics of the agency. But more moderate business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Assn. of Manufacturers are also unhappy about some of President Bush’s four appointments to the agency.

Bush is the first president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be in a position to fill a majority of seats--in this case, three--on the five-member board at one time. Roosevelt appointed all five when the NLRB was created in 1935.

Bush’s appointments must be confirmed by the Senate, but the more moderate opponents of some of the nominees concede that it will be an uphill fight to block even one confirmation.

Labor is not objecting to any of the nominees because all four--the three proposed board members and a general counsel--are as unbiased as labor could reasonably expect from a Republican Administration that has shown little sympathy for unions.

On the other hand, most business leaders expected much more for themselves and are disappointed that the anti-labor legacy of Dotson’s NLRB seems to be evaporating.

Mark A. de Bernardo, director of labor law for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said its officers are concerned about the future of the NLRB if all four of Bush’s appointees are confirmed.

The Chamber will try to block the appointment of Donald F. Rodgers to the board because he spent many years as a lobbyist for both the Teamsters and the Operating Engineers union. This is in contrast to the many management attorneys appointed to the NLRB by both Bush and Reagan.

There is a nice irony in the appointment of Rodgers, who has worked for several years in various capacities in both the Reagan and Bush administrations after his stint with the unions.

Rodgers was named to fill the seat left vacant by the quite moderate John E. Higgins Jr., a respected career attorney with the NLRB who was a Reagan recess appointee.

The choice of Higgins outraged the ultra-conservatives and they managed to block his Senate confirmation. They did it largely because of the unrelenting opposition of the anti-union National Right to Work Committee.

Now the conservatives may well be stuck with Rodgers who is, if anything, a tad more liberal than Higgins.

But the National Right to Work Committee isn’t quitting. Reed Larson, president of the 1.7-million-member organization, recently wrote Bush to say his organization will do all it can to block Rodgers’ confirmation.

The two other moderate conservatives appointed by Bush--Dennis Devaney and Clifford R. Oviatt Jr.--aren’t expected to run into any serious opposition, although Dotson and others on the far right are trying to start a campaign against Devaney too.

Bush’s most interesting NLRB appointee is Jerry Hunter, 36, named to fill the pivotal position of general counsel.

Hunter was corporate attorney for a St. Louis trucking company that has had some bitter battles with unions.

A Republican raised in poverty in rural Arkansas, Hunter in 1986 became Missouri’s top labor official in that state’s Republican administration.

While there, he won praise from both labor and management as a fair-minded, competent attorney--neutralizing, if not entirely eliminating, the enmity that he created in labor circles as a management attorney.

In the past couple of years, the NLRB led by Stephens has remained oriented toward management, but it has certainly softened its once harshly anti-union stand. What is so galling to the agency’s critics on the right, however, is the possibility that the new Bush appointees will make the NLRB even less anti-union than it is now.