If I understand it correctly, Amazon's argument here appears to be that the NLRB's statutory authority (i.e., its power to adjudicate labor disputes) is essentially unconstitutional, as it deprives Amazon (and other companies) of the ordinary trial process.<p>If this interpretation is correct, the consequences are disturbing: a ruling against the NLRB here would imply absolute judicial supremacy, and not a system of checks and balances. In effect, it'd break the US Government's regulatory backbone: any regulatory decision could be challenged not within its statutory limits (or for exceeding its statutory limits), but on the basis of statutory regulation <i>itself</i> being unconstitutional. In effect, it would amount to a government whose regulatory framework is not controlled by the elected branches, but by the sole unelected one.
This is one of the many reasons that I’m traveling the world to look for a new home. I love my city and surrounding metro. I wrote an angry diatribe when an asshole politician criticized it. A friend suggested submitting it to a local paper and it got published there. I wanted to live here for the rest of my life.<p>America is too hostile towards regular people. Its values don’t match mine. I’ll sadly accept a lot of things in my life changing in ways I regret to separate from it.
Without the board, employees would not be allowed to exercise their right to negotiate together without actually losing their job, which I'd say is fairly unconstitutional.
At some point the U.S. will have to either do away with the fiction that corporations are people or just say normalize the notion that the people serve corporations. We should change JFK’s statement a bit. Ask not what corporations can do for you but rather what you can do for them.<p>We’ve legalized foreign campaign contributions as long as it comes from a corporation so why not ban labor protections and whatnot? The country needs a major reset in terms of governance and representation. Things like banning the labor board brings us closer to having that reset.
What gets me about opposition to unions as limiting a free market is that unions solve a very real problem with the efficiency of employee negotiations. A union is a much more efficient way to discover what the employees want from their workplaces than negotiating individually with them one by one.<p>When negotiations break down, the union makes it clear and potentially strikes or takes other steps to pressure the company. When individual employee negotiations break down, you get churn and underperformance and dissatisfaction. People will often see burnout or mismanagement and assume it's an individual issue vs a breakdown in the contract between workers and the company.
These efforts may succeed.<p>The current Supreme Court is on a tear of revoking precedents and inventing new legal standards. One is historical tradition, which is nonsense. Another is the major questions doctrine, which is also nonsense. It basically says that if the court decides an issue is important enough the court can overrule the other two branches.<p>This is coming to a head this term with a case that threatens to overturn another Supreme Court precedent called Chevron. This 40 year old decision says that courts should give deference to regulatory agencies where there’s ambiguity.<p>Congress and multiple administrations have relied upon this when writing law. It’s what allows the administrative state to exist and function.<p>This court seems set to decide that Congress has to be explicit on every little thing, which is completely unworkable. And that’s the point: to cripple executive oversight.<p>It’s the rich and powerful neutering regulations and oversight to the detriment of everyone else so they can make even more money because regulations hurt profits.<p>That’s all that’s going on here.
Rational companies go to the absolute extent of the law. If they don't then some other company will and they will die. That means I don't look at a company and call it 'evil' based on them taking advantage of legal thing x, y or z. What defines evil to me are companies that lobby for or support in other ways expanding harmful policies or reducing protections for people. I honestly don't know the details of the arguments involved here but the high level read smells of evil.
Corporate personhood is unconstitutional, the rights of human beings don't apply to imaginary legal constructions designed to protect the holders of capital from having any criminal or civil responsibility for the actions of the corporations that they ultimately control.<p>It's a system in which major shareholders benefit from the criminal and reckless behavior of executives (who get large bonuses for taking the risk, although as the 2008-2009 subprime mortgage fraud episode demonstrated, even they don't face much real risk for engaging in criminal activities on behalf of their shareholders).<p>At the very least, if corporations are people, they should be subjected to the death penalty for engaging in egregious misconduct - state seizure of all corporate assets with no compensation to shareholders followed by restructuring makes sense in such cases, e.g. Boeing, Purdue Pharma, etc.
NLRB was set up by Congress to enforce the National Labor Relations ACT! So it's basically a court that's set up to adjudicate Labor Disputes and enforce Labor Laws/Regulations and promote negotiated solutions rather than Strikes and Walkouts. And in fact if there's a strike planned then the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service has to be notified in advance of any Strike Vote! Go on strike without notifying the FMCS and the strike is not legal and can result in a Union losing their case there in Labor Court(NLRB).<p>So if one wants to go back to the old days of the Pinkerton Thugs and wildcat strikes and outright social conflict then just try and get rid of the NLRB and related Laws and Courts.
Let’s be unpopular today…<p>The Board may be a good thing, it may be a bad thing, ane plaintiffs have an agenda (100%). But the court is not supposed to rule on that at all, or what is right and wrong. It’s supposed to rule on the law.<p>If the NLRB they’re operating a parallel court system outside of the regular court system, where they’re both a prosecutor outside normal Executive Branch oversight, and a judge outside the Judicial Branch, that’s exactly the sort of thing a Supreme Court full of (establishment) conservatives is going to strike down, not because they hate labor (though it might also be true) but because it violates the power structures prescribed by the Constitution, and their philosophy is that these should actually be upheld. The legislature doesn’t just get to set that sort of a thing up to be independent of the other two branches, any more than they get to have a general police power; it’s a usurpation.
These seems to dovetail with an existing case involving the SEC and it's authority that is under review by the Supreme Court:<p><a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/sec-v-jarkesy-the-threat-to-congressional-and-agency-authority/" rel="nofollow">https://www.americanprogress.org/article/sec-v-jarkesy-the-t...</a>
well I have a gripe with the existence of Administrative Law Judges<p>but ouch, didn't see the NLRB coming being the one on the chopping block to cause this change<p>hope congress, the people, or the states and their people will create a system that is more durable<p>I’m all for accelerating this outcome, just always a shock to see what angle it comes from
Regardless of this terrible concept, at-will workers will always have substantial power here. Any time they walk out as a unit, the company is dead until the rift is resolved.<p>Undoing the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 would be a tragedy but even then, the workers were getting employers' ears.
I'm surprised there is so little interest in this story on HN. There are three different submissions for this which reached the front page, but then rapidly dropped to below page 3.
Meta: I find it so hard to believe this comment thread is comprised of actual citizens/humans making these comments and not shills/bots intentionally manipulating the conversation.<p>I truly wish I had the ability to look into accounts and see their post history, connection history, see what accounts they have, see which accounts are upvoting and downvoting, see if this is actually organic conversation or to what degree it's all manipulated.<p>How insane is it to be at the point where we have no visibility into whether we're conversing with other people or are being completely manipulated? I don't know how society can move forwards like this. We need some sort of transparency.
I think the problem is the original purpose of unions has been a line bit distorted. Originally it was supposed to protect workers from getting injured and making human capital just expensive enough to make your employees valuable assets you retain.<p>I have to be careful with my next comment, because reading it on the internet can sound like I personally look down another group of people, which I do not; my goal is to point out that it is not skilled labor.<p>When we’ve gotten to the point of “package handler unions” and “barista unions”, I think the system is abused. I completely agree with thongs like fire sprinkler installer unions on the other hand.<p>The other issue i have is forced union dues. Nobody should be forced into paying a private organization money. That is comically unconstitutional