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Hope Pollard’s recent opinion piece in the Lewiston Sun Journal urging U.S. Sen. Angus King to vote against President Joe Biden’s nomination of Lauren McFerran to chair the National Labor Relations Board was spot on.
I believe this rushed and premature nomination has the potential to further distort the mission of that agency, which was always intended to serve as a neutral referee between labor and management but in recent years has become a government agency seemingly charged with enforcing pro-union policies.
As Pollard observes, under McFerran, the board has consistently chosen to back a union agenda over the rights of employees and workers. In its notorious Cemex decision and the joint employer standard supported by McFerran, the board has given union leaders significantly more power to take over workplaces, regardless of worker sentiment. Fortunately, the courts have overturned the current board’s joint employer standard, but I think McFerran herself has made clear that with another term as chair she would push even harder to subject franchise businesses to the expanded joint employer definition.
King has an outsized voice in the confirmation process. As one of the rare, truly independent voices in Congress, he should lead the charge against McFerran’s nomination. Every worker should have the right to join a union if he or she chooses. I believe McFerran’s pro-union bias gives union bosses too much power over workers.
Larry Grondin
Scarborough
