NLRB wants to publicize the right to unionize

WASHINGTON - Most private employers would have to display posters informing workers about their right to form a union, according to a proposed federal rule bound to please unions and irk companies trying to resist labor organizers.

The planned rule, announced Tuesday by the National Labor Relations Board, would require businesses to post notices in employee break rooms or other prominent locations to explain workers' rights to bargain collectively, distribute union literature or engage in other union activities without reprisal.

The move to issue a broad rule signals a more aggressive posture by the labor board, which usually makes policy on a case-by-case basis in individual labor-management disputes.

It comes less than a year after President Barack Obama made several recess appointments to give the NLRB its first Democratic majority in a decade. The appointments were held up for months over GOP concerns that one nominee, former AFL-CIO counsel Craig Becker, would be too sympathetic to labor.

As unions struggle to push for pro-labor legislation, their leaders are looking to the NLRB and other federal agencies to help reverse what they see as an increasingly hostile atmosphere for organizing new members. Unions are trying to reverse years of membership declines in the private sector, where 7.2 percent of workers belong to a union.

Michael Eastman, executive director of labor policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, questioned whether the NLRB has the legal authority to issue the rule. If it goes forward, he urged the posters be more balanced for those who don't want to join unions. The rule would not take effect for at least 60 days, during which the NLRB is taking comments.