Controversy surrounding actions coming out of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) intensified on September 22 when a congressional committee examined what the panel’s chairman called the agency’s “assault on American workers and job creators.”

The House Education and the Workforce Committee, chaired by Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican, titled the hearing “Culture of Union Favoritism: Recent Actions of the National Labor Relations Board.”

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Recent actions taken by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have sparked enough anger among employers to prompt a lawsuit, an ad campaign, and support for a bill in Congress that’s seen as a way to curb what one employer group calls a “rogue agency.”

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) filed a lawsuit on September 10 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to stop the NLRB from moving forward with a recently approved plan to require most employers — both union and nonunion — to display a new poster outlining worker rights.

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The National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) refusal to comply with a congressional subpoena is a sign of increasing rancor stemming from the Board’s case against the Boeing Co.

The NLRB refused to comply with an August 5 subpoena from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that set an August 12 deadline for the agency to turn over documents related to the Board’s actions against Boeing.

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Yesterday, May 16, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a district court must take another look at a case that will determine whether approximately 25,000 employees are entitled to have their pension benefits recalculated under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Although the Supreme Court indicated that the employees may be eligible for such relief, it noted that the district court had relied on the wrong provision when it fashioned its remedies plan.

Under ERISA, employers must provide certain notices before reducing medical or retirement benefits. However, when CIGNA changed its pension plan from a traditional defined benefit plan to a cash balance plan, Janice Amara, along with other plan participants, brought a class action lawsuit alleging that CIGNA did not comply with ERISA’s notice and summary plan description (SPD) requirements. More specifically, the participants alleged that the SPD and other disclosures were inconsistent with the plan itself.

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On Wednesday, February 2, the U.S. Senate voted 51-47 against a largely symbolic amendment that would repeal the health care reform legislation enacted last year. (The amendment was to an unrelated Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) funding bill.) Senate Republicans unanimously backed the amendment, which would have repealed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), but no Democrats voted in favor of the measure.

Even if the Senate had approved the repeal amendment, it was unlikely to move much further since President Barack Obama had previously indicated that he would veto it. The Senate did, however, pass another amendment to the FAA bill that would repeal a tax-reporting provision found in the PPACA by an 81-17 vote.

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On Wednesday, January 19, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act (H.R. 2), a largely symbolic bill that would repeal the health care reform legislation enacted last year, in a 245-189 vote.

The new legislation, backed unanimously by House Republicans, would repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the health care-related provisions in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. The bill was largely approved along party lines with all 242 Republicans and only three Democrats voting in favor of the measure.

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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) agenda to increase enforcement, which includes items such as ergonomics, noise standards, and an injury and illness prevention program, seems destined to run into resistance from the new Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

It’s fairly clear that changes to the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) proposed last year are done for. In their place, OSHA seems likely to move towards implementing its agenda through regulation, enforcement policy, and reinterpretation of existing standards, among other techniques.

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“Prison terms of up to 10 years could be imposed on officers and directors of companies that knowingly violate OSHA rules under a proposed revision to the Occupational Safety and Health Act now advancing through Congress,” reported Jim Stanley, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor, on his Workplace Safety blog.

He said that the 10-year term would apply in situations where a violation contributed to the death of an employee. The current maximum sentence under the OSHA act is six months and the law does not specify that officers and directors can be held criminally responsible.

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