On the recordFebruary 6, 2012
I rise today to express my concern about provisions of this bill that amend an unrelated labor law statute--the Railway Labor Act. As the chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, which has jurisdiction over this law and the agency that enforces it, the National Mediation Board, I am troubled by the inclusion of this language and the implication that it creates; namely, that this independent Federal agency and the hard- working Americans it protects are being punished for recent regulatory changes that protect workers' rights. The National Mediation Board--or NMB as it is known--established in 1934, is an independent agency that administers labor relations in the air and rail industries. In 2009 this small, 51-person agency went through a careful process to change the voting rules governing the elections that it administers. Under the old antiquated election system, all nonvoters were automatically and arbitrarily treated as a ``no'' vote, or a vote against the union, regardless of whether they actually opposed forming a union. These rules were contrary to the election rules used in National Labor Relations Board-supervised elections and different from the rules governing elections held throughout the entire United States, from school boards to U.S. Senators. Think about it--if you don't vote, you are counted as a ``no'' vote. What kind of sense does that make? It made no sense.…
