Tom Harkin: “the amendment propounded by the distinguished Senator from Arkansas really would harm the NLRB drastically. The Senator…”

“the amendment propounded by the distinguished Senator from Arkansas really would harm the NLRB drastically. The Senator from Arkansas said the caseload had gone down. That is true, the caseload did go down, I assume because we increased some of the funding and they were able to, then, hire some more staff and decrease the caseload. If now, however, we cut the funding, they are going to have to release those people and fire people who were hired; therefore we will be right back where we started from. We keep hearing about the backlog. What is the backlog? The NLRB, at the end of last fiscal year, had 6,198 cases pending at the end of the last fiscal year. I understand some of those were reduced last year, but we are still in the neighborhood of about a 5,500-case backlog. So I do not know how the Senator from Arkansas can argue we are making great progress. We are making a little bit of progress. But to take the $25 million out of the NLRB would put us right back where we were before, and you would see the backlog start going back up again. That may not be his intention, but that is exactly what would happen. At this funding level, the staffing, I am told, would have to be reduced by at least 100 people below the current level. That would be about a 5-percent reduction. Again, that would mean the backlogs would continue to go up. The time to process the claims would grow significantly, and that would hurt not just the employees but also the employers.”