The National Labor Relations Board overturned a Bush-era ruling,making it easier to organize unions, and backed efforts byorganizers to form smaller units within the health-care industry,actions sought by unions.

The rulings issued today, three days after President BarackObama's labor-board chairman ended her tenure, are opposed bybusiness groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and theNational Association of Manufacturers.

The decisions “have the high likelihood to be severelydisruptive to the workplace, will hinder job creation and put jobsat risk,” Joe Trauger, vice president of human-resource policy atthe Washington-based manufacturers' group, said today in ane-mail.

The rulings are the first released by the NLRB since ChairmanWilma Liebman left the board, which mediates disputes and monitorsunfair labor practices, as her term ended on Aug. 27. Under herleadership, the NLRB became a target for Republicans and businessesthat say it became too pro-union.

The board in a 3-1 decision agreed to let certified nursingassistants at a property owned by a unit of Kindred Healthcare Inc.make up a bargaining unit without including all other non-professional workers. The decision, aimed at health-carefacilities, will permit unions to create bargaining units withfewer members, such as poker dealers among casino workers andchicken-wrappers at a meatpacking plant, the Chamber said.

The board overturned a 2007 ruling by the board under PresidentGeorge W. Bush that made it easier to throw out a union. The Bushruling, in a case involving auto-parts maker Dana Corp., allowed animmediate challenge to a union's status as a bargaining agent by 30percent of a company's employees or by a rival union. The decisioncreated a 45-day window to contest a right to bargain. Republicanboard member Brian Hayes dissented from the ruling releasedtoday.

40-Year Precedent
The ruling today “restores40 years of precedent only recently struck down by the notoriouslyanti-worker Bush board,” Kimberly Freeman Brown, executive directorof American Rights at Work, a pro-union group based in Washington,said in an e-mailed statement. The decision “is nothing more than areturn to a process for voluntary recognition that for years workedjust fine for employers and employees alike.”

Ronald Meisburg, the NLRB general counsel until he departed in2010, said in an e-mail that reversing the Dana rule is a “backwardstep on the principle of employee free choice,” since the 2007decision had allowed for a secret-ballot vote when an employervoluntarily recognized a union. The decision in organizing in thehealth-care industry will require employers to spend more time andmoney in dealing with a multiplicity of bargaining unions andunions.

“It will promote labor unrest instead of labor peace,” hesaid.

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