House Lawmakers Call For More Funding For Union Elections As Settlement Spreads –

More than 140 congressmen are calling on House leaders to cut eight years of equal funding to the National Labor Council and say the agency is not equipped to handle job growth at companies like Starbucks and Amazon.

Შi Letter Rosa Delauro, Member of Parliament for Dr. Due to deterioration and lack of funds. All but four signatories are Democrats.

They demanded a Labor Council budget of $ 368 million for next fiscal year, a substantial increase from the current $ 274 million that has not been reduced since 2014. The cessation of funding in recent years means the agency’s budget is reduced to real dollars.

A similar letter was circulated in the Senate with the same $ 368 million proposal, led by Senators Bob Casey (D-Pa.) And John Hickenluper (D-Colo.).

The push came after union activists and council members rang alarm bells about the agency’s declining state, fearing the lack of resources would make workers more vulnerable to union destruction.

Congressman Donald Norcos, co-chair of the House Labor Group, directed the letter to Delauro and Congressman Tom Cole (Okla.), A Republican appointed to the Subcommittee on Assignments, which funds employment agencies.

Norcos told HuffPost that the NLRB has been “hungry for the past decade” and workers trying to negotiate together will pay the price.

“It’s been happening for a long time,” said Norcos, a member of the International Brotherhood of Power Plant Workers. “This year we need to change that.”

The NLRB oversees private sector union elections and reviews disputes between business groups and employers. The agency consultant said that compared to last year, in fiscal year 2022, compared to last year, election petitions increased by 57%. It also saw a 17% increase in allegations of “unfair work practices” or violations of the law.

Most of the election petition comes directly from Starbucks, where workers have conducted one of the most visible organizational campaigns in decades. At this time, 30 coffee chain stores voted for the union and more than 200 in total petitioned to call an election.

Workers at Amazon’s warehouse on Staten Island, which employs approximately 8,000 people, made history by creating the company’s first U.S. union. Meanwhile, workers at a nearby facility, numbering about 1,500, will vote this week to join the Amazon Labor Union.

Requesting additional council funding could lead to fights with GOP members in both chambers who appear to draw the red line to give the agency more money. The Labor Council has a normative mission to facilitate collective bargaining, and many Republicans seem happy to let it go.

The House Republicans who joined the Democrats in the letter were MP Jeff Van Drew (NJ), Chris Smith (NJ), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA) and Don Bacon (Neb.).

Norcos acknowledged that Democratic political capital would be needed to increase funding.

“I didn’t expect it to be easy,” he said. “If it were easy [already]. “

Since 2010, the number of full-time employees at the NLRB has decreased from 1,733 to just 1,207. Most of the reductions affected regional offices that conduct ground -breaking activities, such as investigations into unfair labor practices necessary to enforce workers ’rights to work. In adjusting for inflation, the agency estimates that its budget has been reduced by 25% since 2010.

The number of cases dropped over a long period of time, but agency staff were reduced more rapidly and the number of council -controlled workers increased significantly.

In a recent interview with HuffPost, NLRB consultant Jennifer Abruzzo said she was concerned that the board would not fulfill its statutory duty if unaltered funding continued because it would delay cases and hurt workers who trying to organize their work.

“AY [only] “We have a lot of bandwidth,” Abruzzo said. “We find it difficult to make sure that hearings are held in the short term, that decisions are made in the short term, that we investigate cases as soon as possible.”