Will An NLRB Labor Agenda Be Hobbled By A Case Backlog?

The effect of last month’s Supreme Court ruling in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning is the subject of an article in The Hill, which cites NLRB spokesman Tony Wagner’s estimate that the board has identified roughly 100 decisions that must be reviewed because of that decision. In Canning, the Court ruled that President Obama’s three purported interim Board appointments, made in January of 2012, were invalid, thus invalidating hundreds of decisions made during the months that followed. There are fewer decisions to revisit than many expected, however, in part because many of the contested decisions related to labor disputes that have since been resolved. Nonetheless, there is some speculation that the workload from old cases will be heavy enough to prevent the Board from dealing with some controversial current issues that labor would like to see addressed, including Northwestern University football team’s unionization bid, the right of employees to use work email to organize a union and a proposed rule that would allow for speedier union elections.