Texas District Judge Mark Pittman, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019, ruled that the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) cannot pursue claims against a “social care network” company. FindHelp, a company that “connects people with programs and helps people find social services in their communities,” violated the NRLB rule when it fired two employees who allegedly tried to force other employees at the company to unionize.
Created by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, passed under the Progressive Roosevelt Administration, the NLRB maintains that its mission was, and still is, to redress “unequal bargaining power” between employers and employees by promoting unionization. Proponents of the act say that employees “do not have complete freedom of association or actual freedom of contract with their employers.”
The Progressive Attack on Capital
The NLRB is part of a progressive attack on private ownership of capital that dates back to the time of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. They claim that the first priority of the attack is to abolish the right to private property ownership. To quote from Chapter 2 of the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848:
We Communists have been accused of wanting to abolish the right of man to personally acquire property as the fruit of his own labor, which property is said to be the foundation of all individual freedom, activity and independence…
You are frightened because we want to abolish private property. But in your present society, for one-ninth of the population, private property has already been abolished. It exists for a minority only because of its absence in the hands of that one-ninth. You therefore accuse us of abolishing a form of property, the existence of which is necessary for the majority of society that it does not exist.
In a word, you accuse us of trying to take your property. That is exactly what we intend.
By effectively abolishing employees’ right to voluntarily outsource their labor without being coerced, workers are losing valuable rights to their most intimate capital: their willingness and ability to sell their services to employers.
It also achieves another Marxist objective: pitting employers against employees.
Roosevelt's socialists saw an opportunity to exploit the economic downturn to impose their policies on the national economy, and they did so with great support from Senator Robert F. Wagner, a progressive Democrat from New York who was part of the corrupt Tammany Hall Democratic government that effectively controlled the city and state for over 100 years, and the law is informally named after him as the “Wagner Act.”
The Commission is composed of one Administrative Law Judge and five other Commissioners. Commissioners may not be removed except for good cause or on a motion approved by the Commission. In other words, Commissioners are completely protected from removal by the President, despite the power given to him in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution: “The President shall have power to appoint all other Officers of the United States whose appointment is not otherwise provided for in this Constitution.”
Myers v. United States (1926) made it clear that the president can not only appoint these officers, but also remove them: As Justia pointed out, “The Constitution gives the president unlimited power to remove from office all officers whom he has had a hand in appointing.”
When the Act was enacted, two layers of protection were provided for this power, effectively turning the NRLB into a private fiefdom for trade unions, giving them free reign to attack employers such as Findhelp with impunity.
Constitutional
In 1937, a liberal majority of the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the NLRB was constitutional, declaring that “the right to organize” is a “fundamental right,” adding:
Employees have a clear right to organize for any lawful purpose and to elect representatives, just as (owners) organize their own business and elect officers and agents.
Discrimination against the right of employees to self-organise and represent themselves is a proper subject of condemnation by the competent legislative body.
Since 1935, the NRLB has been busy “condemning” what it considers to be “unfair labor practices.”
There are currently several lawsuits challenging the NRLB's authority, with Findhelp's lawsuit being the latest. Findhelp “argues that the two-tiered just-cause removal protections afforded NLRB ALJs prevent the President from fully exercising his removal power under Article II of the Constitution.”
Judge Pittman agreed that Findhelp had sufficient arguments to grant a preliminary injunction against the NRLB's attacks on the company.
Findhelp is not alone
Findhelp has many allies. Elon Musk's SpaceX, Amazon, Starbucks, and Trader Joe's have also filed similar lawsuits against the NRLB, each making essentially the same claims. Musk's companies' complaint puts it well: “The NRLB's current method of operation departs significantly from the traditional understanding of the separation of powers, which holds that 'the concentration of all legislative, executive, and judicial powers in the same hands' is 'tyranny itself.'” It adds that “the exercise of prosecutorial, legislative, and judicial powers violates the separation of powers and due process provided for in the Constitution.”
The problem was aptly expressed by a former owner of Starbucks who told employees, “If you're not happy at Starbucks, go work somewhere else,” leading the NRLB to accuse him of threatening to fire disgruntled employees.
The decision, naturally, drew the ire of big government worshippers like the Huffington Post and the New Republic, which argued that Trump-appointed judges pose an existential threat to the National Labor Relations Board and the entire fabric of labor law that has morphed from a law passed in 1935.
