NLRB’s Budget Doubles as Workload Plummets

[Geee]

Free Beacon:

The federal government’s top labor arbiter has seen its budget skyrocket even as its caseload plummeted to record lows over the past three decades, according to a new study.

 

The National Labor Relations Board, which oversees workplace disputes and union elections, is issuing fewer decisions and handling fewer cases than it ever has before thanks to plummeting union membership numbers. However, that decline in work has coincided with an ever-increasing budget, according to an analysis published by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

 

“Since 1980, fiscal year total case intake (representation cases and unfair labor practice cases) is down 58%; published decisions are down 85%; appropriations in 2014 dollars are up 98%,” the report says.

 

Staffing levels no longer reflect the workload that the agency handles, according to study author and former NLRB board member John Raudabaugh.

 

The agency spends four times more on its workforce per decision issued than it historically did and it continues to maintain local offices across the country even as right to work laws have spread and union membership has been reduced from a peak of 30 percent in the 1950s to about 10 percent today.