WASHINGTON, Oct. 6—The International Franchise Association today hailed new legislation, The Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act, introduced by House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline to rein in the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that is using executive action to implement key portions of the ill-fated, ill-conceived Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) or Card Check and urged the House to immediately pass the legislation.  

“Amidst a continued challenging economic environment, franchise small businesses should be able to spend their energy on creating jobs, not facing new rules that take away rights of employers to communicate with their employees.” said IFA President & CEO Steve Caldeira. “We appreciate Chairman Kline’s effort to rein in the NLRB and urge the House of Representatives to immediately pass this important legislation.” 

Even though Congress rightly refused to pass the job-killing legislation, the NLRB is attempting to effectively silence employers during an organizing drive–a key goal of EFCA–by reducing the amount of time they have to make their case to employees. As a result, many workers will only hear the union’s side of the story.  

The Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act would directly remedy these key concerns, as well as head off “micro union” organizing drives introduced by the ruling in the “Specialty Healthcare” decision. Micro-unions not only threaten to overwhelm job creators with burdens associated with negotiating with multiple bargaining units for similarly situated employees, but also allow union strategists to gerrymander representation elections, effectively disenfranchising employees that do not support unionization.  

The bill would allow franchise business owners to have sufficient time to talk to their employees and guarantees that employees have the chance to make an informed decision through a private-ballot process. 

Also yesterday, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), in response to a lawsuit filed by the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW), a broad-based business coalition of which IFA is a member, announced they will delay the effective date of the Notice Posting requirement from Nov. 14, 2011 to Jan. 31, 2012.  This delay will likely allow those cases to resolve themselves prior to this rule potentially going into effect.  The NLRB delay notice is available



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IFA will be hosting a webinar on Oct. 11 for franchise businesses interested in learning more about the impact of
regulations currently in the process of finalization by the NLRB, including the poster rule, secret ballot initiatives, ambush elections, micro-unions, and the employer persuader rule. For more information on IFA’s webinar, please click




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