On June 17, 2010, the Supreme Court held in New Process Steel, L.P. v. NLRB that over 600 decisions made by two-member panels of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) must be vacated and reheard because the procedure of having two-member panels hear a dispute did not comply with the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The majority and the dissent both based their decisions on their interpretation of the statute. However, in his dissent, Justice Kennedy also highlights the fact that when Congress passed the NLRA, they surely did not intend to allow the Labor Board be left defunct for a long period of time.
While labor unions in the United States have been in a serious decline for many years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2009 there were still 7.9 million workers in the private sector that belonged to a union. These 7.9 million people do … Read the rest