Amazon joins companies arguing US labor board is unconstitutional

https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-joins-companies-arguing-us-labor-board-is-unconstitutional-2024-02-16/

157 236 2 years ago

judge2020• 2 years ago

Without the board, employees would not be allowed to exercise their right to negotiate together without actually losing their job, which I'd say is fairly unconstitutional.

godzillabrennus• 2 years ago

America already feels like a corporation not a country to a large part of the working class. Further undermining the safeguards for labor will have a huge impact on the labor movement. The pendulum will swing mighty hard the other direction in response. This is a dumb move by corporate America.

toomuchtodo2• 2 years ago

Will cause reasonable people do unreasonable things. Sometimes I wonder how lacking the aggregate critical thinking is of the folks at these orgs having these back room conversations, or that they’ve never opened a history textbook. I suppose the result of their positions, disconnection from median reality, and perception of risk.

"I put a dog in a corner, why did it viciously attack me!?"

moshegramovsky• 2 years ago

You're absolutely right.

And yet some people are still surprised by the political climate in America that is being created as a result. I keep saying that someone (I don't care who) needs to do something about housing, healthcare, and wages before there's even bigger trouble.

Dumb move by Amazon. First time after hearing criticism of them for over 20 years that I actually felt like I was wrong about them.

spaceribs2• 2 years ago

They're feeling the squeeze for sure, Millennials don't feel invested in the market (because we have no investments due to multiple fleecings across the last 15 years), and Gen Z is radicalized beyond belief against capitalism.

The mood is that Boomers are only going to be "in charge" for so long, and when that tape runs out, things stop being so predictable. I bet they'll ratchet up as much of these alienating policies as possible just to ensure the overton window buffers out progressive action before they don't have the means to anymore.

A cheap but effective tactic for them to take.

jmward013• 2 years ago

The problem with the idea that 'the pendulum will eventually swing back' is that it isn't true. History's graveyard has way more countries in it than are currently in existence. Every one of those dead countries/societies saw the pendulum 'swing back' every time except the last one.

m_0x• 2 years ago

America already feels like a corporation not a country

There is a concerning percentage of US citizens that actively wants this.

"He will run America like one of his business"

happiness_idx• 2 years ago

"rights" are purely metaphysical super natural constructs they're only enforced via might.

Enjoy your corporate overlord fiefdoms

wredue2• 2 years ago

Funny how few people understand that “rights” are not fundamental. What good is a “right” that nobody observes you actually have?

Rights are granted by the legal observation of said right. If your right boils down to words without observability, it’s not a right.

Strang2• 2 years ago

The right to assembly is a restriction on the government, not private enterprise.

gh02t• 2 years ago

The Supreme Court has already upheld that the right for employees to organize is a fundamental one and that Congress can enforce it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Ste....

...the statute goes no further than to safeguard the right of employees to self-organization and to select representatives of their own choosing for collective bargaining or other mutual protection without restraint or coercion by their employer.
That is a fundamental right. Employees have as clear a right to organize and select their representatives for lawful purposes as the respondent has to organize its business and select its own officers and agents. Discrimination and coercion to prevent the free exercise of the right of employees to self-organization and representation is a proper subject for condemnation by competent legislative authority.

It's the mechanism of enforcement that seems to be in question here, but IANAL.

akerl_• 2 years ago

I don’t really have a strong opinion one way or the other about the labor board, but presumably that can’t be the justification for why we need a labor board. Most things that are criminally or civilly punishable don’t have specific government entity that enforces them.

There’s no free speech board.

moate5• 2 years ago

It was a compromise to help move away from the old way of dealing with labor disputes, which involved murders on both sides. The local cops were almost always in the pockets of the wealthy (which has of course changed in the intervening century of course) so congress helped set an independent federal agency to regulate disputes. Go read about the events surrounding the Wagner act’s passage, it should help you pick a side.

bluGill2• 2 years ago

I don't see anything in the constitution about that.

If nothing else, the NLRB forces people who otherwise like their job to join a union they may not like, which seems equally unconstitutional.

Osmose4• 2 years ago

The point of a union is that if you don't like it you can advocate to it for changes with less of a power imbalance than if it was the company that you didn't like. The union can't fire you like the company can.

To paraphrase a common argument about why we don't need unions, if you don't like the union, why not just find another job?

roamerz2• 2 years ago

which I'd say is fairly unconstitutional.

Genuinely curious, what part of the Constitution protects their right to negotiate?

bluish293• 2 years ago

The NLRA was passed in 1935 which is the law that have the following:

Section 7: Employees have the right to self-organize, form, join, or assist labor unions, bargain collectively with employers through representatives of their own choosing, and engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining.
Section 8(a)(1): Employers cannot interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights under Section 7.

Shortly after that, it was challenged [1]. In short, The Supreme Court upheld the act in a 5-4 decision, acknowledging Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce, even indirectly through labor regulations. This was not the only case. The supreme court weighted on many aspects of the act [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Ste...

[2] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/unions-have...

kemayo3• 2 years ago

The National Labor Relations Act creates a right to collective bargaining for private sector employees. It's not a fundamental constitutional right, but it is a right.

I've seen arguments about it being impossible for the state to restrict union activities under the 1st amendment because of freedom of association, and trying to shoehorn it into the 14th under a due process theory (can't deprive liberty without process). These are both restrictions on state activity, i.e. saying that the state can't outlaw unions, rather than saying that a private sector company couldn't just immediately fire anyone who joins a union.

moomin• 2 years ago

The 13th

ryan932• 2 years ago

You are saying that people are entitled to block others from taking a job they wont do?

photochemsyn• 2 years ago

Corporate personhood is unconstitutional, the rights of human beings don't apply to imaginary legal constructions designed to protect the holders of capital from having any criminal or civil responsibility for the actions of the corporations that they ultimately control.

It's a system in which major shareholders benefit from the criminal and reckless behavior of executives (who get large bonuses for taking the risk, although as the 2008-2009 subprime mortgage fraud episode demonstrated, even they don't face much real risk for engaging in criminal activities on behalf of their shareholders).

At the very least, if corporations are people, they should be subjected to the death penalty for engaging in egregious misconduct - state seizure of all corporate assets with no compensation to shareholders followed by restructuring makes sense in such cases, e.g. Boeing, Purdue Pharma, etc.

nine_zeros• 2 years ago

Until corporations can be arrested, they cannot be given the same rights as people.

Strang2• 2 years ago

Corporate personhood includes the ability for corporations to own property, enter contracts, and serve as plaintiff or defendant.

And corporations have civil rights only as a tool of shareholders' civil rights. For example, Citizens United was a corporation formed expressly for the purposes of political speech.

moate5• 2 years ago

Corporate personhood is a way for a “corporation” to take responsibility for the actual humans that comprise is. It’s a passing of responsibility from the real to the unreal.

All founders/CEOs should be responsible for their creations. You want to helm a massive, un-democratic monster of “innovation and job creation” in order to accrue wealth? Fine, but you’re putting yourself at a major risk.

pwillia7• 2 years ago

Show me Asset Forfeiture before the company is proven guilty because the money committed the crime!

ihumanable2• 2 years ago

The history of corporate personhood entering into the American legal system is absolutely bonkers. This whole article is worth a read, but I'll pull out the short version too https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corpora...

How did this idea enter the legal system? This is the work of a few men.

Justice Stephen J. Field was angry about the case Santa Clara County v Souther Pacific Railroad. He was incensed because the court refused to answer the question of whether or not corporations were people.

When the Court issued its decision on this second case, the justices expressly declined to decide if corporations were people. The dispute could be, and was, resolved on other grounds, prompting an angry rebuke from one justice, Stephen J. Field, who castigated his colleagues for failing to address “the important constitutional questions involved.” “At the present day, nearly all great enterprises are conducted by corporations,” he wrote, and they deserved to know if they had equal rights too.

The mechanism that decisions were communicated in the 1880s was to publish official volumes of decisions. J.C. Bancroft Davis acted as the court reporter for the volume containing this case and wrote up an inaccurate summary of the case.

The reporter in the 1880s was J. C. Bancroft Davis, whose wildly inaccurate summary of the Southern Pacific case said that the Court had ruled that “corporations are persons within … the Fourteenth Amendment.” Whether his summary was an error or something more nefarious—Davis had once been the president of the Newburgh and New York Railway company—will likely never be known.

Justic Field seized upon the incorrect summary and would inject his preferred reality into an unrelated case.

Field nonetheless saw Davis’s erroneous summary as an opportunity. A few years later, in an opinion in an unrelated case, Field wrote that “corporations are persons within the meaning” of the Fourteenth Amendment. “It was so held in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad,” explained Field, who knew very well that the Court had done no such thing.

It is that completely made up precedent that then became the foundation for legal corporate personhood.

louwrentius• 2 years ago

Isn’t it funny that your country is a democracy maybe, but every company is a dictatorship?

UncleOxidant• 2 years ago

Exactly. Some years ago I worked with a Russian who had been previously laid off from a megacorp. He couldn't make sense of it still a couple years later. I said "Think of it this way, every corporation is like a mini-Soviet Union complete with a five year plan" To which he replied: "No, at least in the Soviet Union they always had a job for you"

throwawa142232• 2 years ago

You make a strong argument for dictatorship.

erik_seaberg2• 2 years ago

Competing dictatorships of experts seem pretty efficient when workers are free to move.

0xdeadbeefbabe• 2 years ago

Yes it's funny. It's also no secret, and people talk about it. They make musicals about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKC8iPeIvEA Also, what about families? Aren't those dictatorships too or is the similarity superficial?

roughly• 2 years ago

Someone once described Social Security as an anti-guillotine fund, and I think the basic premise applies here, as well.

Log_out_• 2 years ago

They yearn for socialism and this is how they express it.

acdha• 2 years ago

Imagine finding internet humor in an online forum! Fetch the fainting couch!

More seriously, while almost nobody is calling for actual guillotines there is a huge problem looming: income inequality started getting worse 40 years ago and that trend is only going to get worse as automation becomes more capable. Pair that with the demographic trends (fewer workers supporting more retired people) and climate change, and this century is shaping up to be quite volatile compared to most people’s lived experience. History has taught us that one of the greatest sparks for conflict is lack of hope; a slight increase in the taxes rich people pay will reduce that risk and it’s hardly a communist uprising to go back to the rates which balanced the budget two decades ago.

foofie4• 2 years ago

They yearn for socialism and this is how they express it.

Socialism is not the bogeyman you think it is. Some of us who were fortunate enough to benefit from living in countries in western Europe can tell you that basic rights such as 10 weeks of paid parental leave including for the father is a very nice thing to have.

username3322113• 2 years ago

Careful with that line of thinking. If the justification of getting more resources to consume is violence, then unarmed, poor and concentrated urban populations are going to be the victims, not the perpetrators.

The workers of the world may think the chains were made to bind them, but in truth the chains bind the military and security apparatus.

And this has happened before. The Roman emperor Caracalla once described his policy on taxes and welfare thus - "None should have money but I, so I can bestow it to soldiers."

feedforward3• 2 years ago

The workers of the world may think the chains were made to bind them, but in truth the chains bind the military and security apparatus.

The last quarter millenia of history stands in contradiction to this. The country with the most extensive security apparatus in 1916 was Russia, and that did not help the czar and his family in the end.

Among the young in the US, socialism is now as popular as capitalism ( https://news.gallup.com/poll/268766/socialism-popular-capita... ). As Marx predicted, short sighted big business functionaries yet press ahead with removing the few scraps they toss from the table in response. It is not the working people who have to fear, but the aristocracy. Besides, the enlisted soldiers abandoning the front and marching back to St. Petersburg and Moscow is what really ignited the revolution.

foofie4• 2 years ago

If the justification of getting more resources to consume is violence, (...)

You picked a very peculiar weasel word to refer to being fairly compensated by the value you create. As if workers who scramble to make ends meet while working for the wealthiest organizations ever devised by man were actually wasting resources that can only possibly be used wisely by billionaires.

And by the way, I recommend you check out the french revolution, and what the urban plebes did to their old masters.

droopyEyelids• 2 years ago

You are absolutely right. The only reason we have the few labor protections we do in this country is because people were driven so hard that they fought to the death to secure them.

Once all the peaceful means of addressing labor disputes become illegal, what will be left to people aside from violence?

candiddevmike• 2 years ago

In the US, violent protests == arrests == free prison labor. There's really no downside for these companies if they eschew all morals.

The only way out of this is through non-violent unity and solidarity, which is conveniently at an all time low.

hehhehaha• 2 years ago

Or you can just pass laws, as what Congress was intended for.

onlyrealcuzzo• 2 years ago

Old people aren't usually starting revolutions.

If you paid young people to go on vacations in Thailand - that'd be a an anti-guillotine fund.

foofie4• 2 years ago

Old people aren't usually starting revolutions.

Social security covers way more stuff than pention plans, at least in civilized countries. It covers stuff like unemployment benefits, medical leaves, parental leaves, etc.

I think that in some countries it also covers some healthcare.

tmaly2• 2 years ago

Amazon in a filing made with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Thursday said it plans to argue that the agency's unique structure violates the company's right to a jury trial.

I wonder if the founders intended that the bill of rights be extended to legal entities?

hobotime3• 2 years ago

Entities have rights because they are comprised of citizens.

We don't get to label a group of citizens and then get to violate their rights because we labeled them.

rayiner• 2 years ago

The founders certainly intended that constitutional rights would apply to people’s business activities (e.g. the contract clause). So the real question is whether the founders intended that business owners would be deprived of those rights merely because of the legal structure of their business.

AndrewKemendo3• 2 years ago

At what point should we stop considering the unstated or not explicitly codified thoughts of the writers of the Constitution?

I swore an oath to defend that cloth multiple times and at this point it’s not clear that it holds up to 21st century scrutiny for being the kind of governing document we would create, should we have an opportunity to do so.

bradchris2• 2 years ago

If we had a strong executive branch right now, we’d have already threatened to launch an FTC inquiry to break up Amazon and or nationalize SpaceX in response, merited or not.

The pure shock of the prospect of breaking them up would spook investors, tank their stock, put both CEOs on the defensive, and force them back in line, and everything would get resolved nicely with a face to face meeting and a handshake.

Whether it’s merited or not is not the point. Purely from a governance standpoint, as a citizen I hate to see corporate interests trying and succeeding to usurp government and societal norms.

Sometimes examples need to be made so others know not to make the same mistake.

thegrim332• 2 years ago

"Whether it's merited or not" you want the might of the federal government to "threaten" businesses, acting within the law, that have interests you don't agree with?

NickC25• 2 years ago

I think there's plenty of merit when a massive, multi-trillion dollar corporation (which already has a long history of exploiting workers, exploiting laws, and buying favorable laws) tries to exploit its workers even more.

I'm all for allowing corporations to have goals that aren't 100% in line with the country's best interests, but those goals do NOT and shall not ever take legal standing over the country's interests. We need to have serious repercussions for when corporations try to usurp government in a race-to-the-bottom attempt to further weaken labor laws or measures designed to protect common citizenry.

Fining the board and C-Suite executives collectively a sum of 5x the company's market cap should be a start.

solardev2• 2 years ago

The Democrats are too aligned with corporate interests to really cater to the desires of the popular left (or really the popular anything). Amazon bribes Democrats a lot more than Republicans: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/amazon-com/recipients?id=D0.... Especially look at their 2020 totals: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/amazon-com/totals?id=D00002...

No way a corporate Dem is going to break them up.

sershe2• 2 years ago

That's what they did in Russia when some company founders dared go against the govt or own/fund anti-government media. They did call being against arbitrary, excessive and illegal governance something like "trying to usurp the government", but at least they were not quite as extreme and didn't say quite parts like "Whether it’s merited or not is not the point", out loud. And corporations supposedly threatening some "societal norms" by suing the government is not even Putin-level, it's straight out of 1930ies Europe.

If this kind of authoritarian stuff is what motivates people in NLRB and similar agencies, I'd say abolish them altogether. I'd rather be ruled by cyberpunk dictator Bezos than people with such opinions/approaches

ITB• 2 years ago

These mega corps are the product and the cause of America being the wealthiest country on earth.

soco• 2 years ago

According to Wikipedia, not USA is the wealthiest country on earth.

toomuchtodo2• 2 years ago

America isn't wealthy, only the shareholders are.

Per the Fed: https://www.stlouisfed.org/institute-for-economic-equity/the... ("The State of U.S. Wealth Inequality | February 05, 2024")

How much wealth inequality is there in the U.S.?
The top 10% of households by wealth had $6.5 million on average. As a group, they held 66.6% of total household wealth.
The bottom 50% of households by wealth had $50,000 on average. As a group, they held only 2.6% of total household wealth.

delfinom4• 2 years ago

Let's not forget that the US poverty line is artificially kept low using an outdated formula to generate better outlooks and not show the economy has been destroyed since the 1960s for the average person.

Officially the formula is

The official poverty line as currently defined by the Census Bureau is "three times the cost of a minimum diet in 1963" – meaning it's measured by how much families spent on food five decades ago.

If the poverty formula were correctly updated to reflect shelter (i.e. housing/rent), I bet 50% of Americans would be classified as living in poverty.

delfinom4• 2 years ago

Cause of 1% of Americans owning all of the wealth of America.

feedforward3• 2 years ago

Europeans crossing the oceN, committing genocide against the native population and having a slave and Jim Crow society in the resource rich third biggest land mass country in the world is what made America rich.

(China has the fourth largest land mass and on some measures is wealthier than the US)

ryan932• 2 years ago

Some of those things actually made us poorer. Why weren't the natives rich with all that land?

alsetmusic• 2 years ago

This is one of the many reasons that I’m traveling the world to look for a new home. I love my city and surrounding metro. I wrote an angry diatribe when an asshole politician criticized it. A friend suggested submitting it to a local paper and it got published there. I wanted to live here for the rest of my life.

America is too hostile towards regular people. Its values don’t match mine. I’ll sadly accept a lot of things in my life changing in ways I regret to separate from it.

ProllyInfamous• 2 years ago

America is too hostile towards regular people.

So many family members constantly remind me that "your brain is capable enough to escape most of America's problems, just earn more money..."

And I keep having to remind them that I don't want to out-compete against others, just so I can have basic healthcare (not attached to employment). Universal healthcare would "lift all the boats," and not just the yacht-owners'.

This is one of the many reasons that I’m traveling the world to look for a new home.

I just applied for my passport, and am looking forward to worldly exploration.

jackson1442• 2 years ago

I just applied for my passport, and am looking forward to worldly exploration.

Congrats! Travel is super important to gain perspective - culturally, politically, and socially.

As an added bonus, having a passport makes ID verification much less of a pain in the ass (typically you just need a passport rather than a state ID + other documents).

lnxg33k1• 2 years ago

Amazon joins SpaceX.. la creme de la creme

moate5• 2 years ago

Don’t foget Starbucks and Trader Joe’s!

tschellenbach• 2 years ago

Feels like there is a balance between ensuring good protection and still allowing markets to be efficient.

jmward013• 2 years ago

Rational companies go to the absolute extent of the law. If they don't then some other company will and they will die. That means I don't look at a company and call it 'evil' based on them taking advantage of legal thing x, y or z. What defines evil to me are companies that lobby for or support in other ways expanding harmful policies or reducing protections for people. I honestly don't know the details of the arguments involved here but the high level read smells of evil.

boplicity• 2 years ago

If they don't then some other company will and they will die.

This really isn't true. There are many companies out there that go above and beyond, in terms of acting ethically. In fact, it can be a competitive advantage to do so, for many reasons. (One, being employees who believe in your mission and buy into it, are far more likely to be productive long-term employees.)

jmward013• 2 years ago

I should qualify 'when it helps them make money'. There are lots of companies that do use the optics of 'being kind' to make money. Additionally, there are companies have influential people leading them that sway their actions in 'nice' ways at the expense of profit but this isn't, strictly speaking, rational behavior for a company. The reality is that the majority do go to what they believe to be the limits of the law so long as it helps them make a profit and this is totally ok. It is the companies that then lobby to change the limits to favor themselves at the expense of actual people that I believe are evil.

Andrex2• 2 years ago

Acting ethically can be turned into a PR boost, but it would take time and money to do so.

skhunted• 2 years ago

At some point the U.S. will have to either do away with the fiction that corporations are people or just say normalize the notion that the people serve corporations. We should change JFK’s statement a bit. Ask not what corporations can do for you but rather what you can do for them.

We’ve legalized foreign campaign contributions as long as it comes from a corporation so why not ban labor protections and whatnot? The country needs a major reset in terms of governance and representation. Things like banning the labor board brings us closer to having that reset.

moate5• 2 years ago

I’m firmly of the opinion that the best outcome for the radical left would be a second Trump presidency as it would likely aid in recruitment and disillusionment with the current paradigm.

Let your enemy show how truly debased and unhinged they can be so that everyone is forced to pick a side. People wonder why political discourse has shifted away from “the middle” and it’s because people are realizing they were lulled into relative political passivity during the clinton-obama eras. The number of older Americans who were beneficiaries of the cold-war era American Prosperity are giving way to a younger generation that feels everything was withheld from them (imo rightfully so) by those in power.

So yea, let Elon and Bezos blow up the NLRB, I’m sure it will help shares in the short term and drive labor militancy in the long term. Win win!

wredue2• 2 years ago

You are strongly underestimating the stupidity of these people.

There is a reason for the saying “a conservative would let their leaders shit in their mouth as long as they thought a liberal might have to smell it”.

These people are highly conditioned to believe that them losing is actually a win so long as someone else is also losing and they STILL vote for it.

Thinking that losing even harder is going to sway these people is off base. They enjoy losing. They don’t care if they lost even harder.

Even when they recognize that they lost, which is a hugely rare occurrence (they’re not hurting the right people, for example), they just blame the left anyway.

Right wing politicians are on record stating “well why didn’t you stop us!? This is your fault!” When they shit blows up in everyone’s face.

We really need to stop projecting our morality on to these people. They do not care, and when they do care, it’s your fault, not theirs.

timeon3• 2 years ago

Accelerationism was always popular on the 'left' but it never worked out.

duped2• 2 years ago

They tried to overturn the last election, and only by the grace of people that stood up when it mattered did that fail. If they seize power again, they will not give it up peacefully. They've already purged all dissenters from within their own ranks, and if given the opportunity to fill out the government with their own ranks they will take it.

We shouldn't be rooting for political violence, which is what you're talking about.

sanderjd4• 2 years ago

This is what the phrase "cut off your nose to spite your face" was created to describe.

How did this work out the first time around? Did it bolster the left's recruitment efforts so much that they became the kingmakers poised to win big majorities and revolutionize society top to bottom at the end of his term? No, it did not.

Did it instead directly result in the composition of the Supreme Court that may actually agree with Amazon's argument in this case? Yes, it did.

The second time around would be just the same. You'd find yourself surprised by the apparent complacency of most people in not taking up your cause, while seeing things you care about get worse in tangible ways.

woodruffw5• 2 years ago

If I understand it correctly, Amazon's argument here appears to be that the NLRB's statutory authority (i.e., its power to adjudicate labor disputes) is essentially unconstitutional, as it deprives Amazon (and other companies) of the ordinary trial process.

If this interpretation is correct, the consequences are disturbing: a ruling against the NLRB here would imply absolute judicial supremacy, and not a system of checks and balances. In effect, it'd break the US Government's regulatory backbone: any regulatory decision could be challenged not within its statutory limits (or for exceeding its statutory limits), but on the basis of statutory regulation itself being unconstitutional. In effect, it would amount to a government whose regulatory framework is not controlled by the elected branches, but by the sole unelected one.

jeffbee• 2 years ago

Yeah that's why the Trump court loves it. It's the federalist society long game.

vundercind4• 2 years ago

Bust up federal regulatory authority -> force states into a regulatory race-to-the-bottom to attract business -> profit.

extheat• 2 years ago

The 5th Circuit court of appeals has already ruled similarly that the SEC's in house courts are unconstitutional, and that Congress can't delegate its legislative/judicial powers to the executive branch in that case under the separation of powers [1], a case that will likely be heard by the SCOTUS. By extension, if that is upheld, the idea is that this same principle could be applied to other executive branch administrative courts like in use at the NLRB.

[1] https://www.winston.com/en/blogs-and-podcasts/government-pro... "Fifth Circuit Holds That SEC’s Use of In-House Courts to Adjudicate Enforcement Actions Is Unconstitutional"

Farfignoggen3• 2 years ago

Congress can Overrule the SCOTUS and the Voters can Change Congress and if things get too Conservative Activist in the SCOTUS and the 1%-5% of the wealthy in the US get too much sway then that's only one Depression Away there from moving back the other direction, A La FDR and another New Deal! And just because any Administrative Law Court and agency is set up under the executive branch does not mean that it was not set up by Congress and is not under Congressional Review where the Executive Branch head of any agency gets reviewed by a Congressional Committee on a regular basis. Congress sets up administrative Courts and any Administrative Law Court NLRB/Other Administrative Law Court can have its decisions appealed to a Federal District Court or a DC Circuit panel of Judges and on up to the SCOTUS.

Manuel_D2• 2 years ago

In effect, it would amount to a government whose regulatory framework is not controlled by the elected branches, but by the sole unelected one.

How is the NRLB "controlled by elected branches" but judicial systems are not? Judges are appointed, not elected - actually, some lower court judges are elected. Same with the NRLB. It's just changing authority from one completely unelected branch of government to another branch that has a mix of elections and appointments.

woodruffw5• 2 years ago

The NLRB is an independent agency of the US Government, which means that its power derives from the statutory authority of Congress. That's what makes it controlled by one of the elected branches.

(The argument is not that the NLRB itself is elected, or needs to be. It's whether the judicial branch has the authority to diminish Congress or the Executive's statutory authorities as enumerated under the constitution.)

SllX5• 2 years ago

actually, some lower court judges are elected

This is going to confuse people.

Not in the Federal government they’re not. All Federal Judges are appointed from the lowest to the highest.

Some States have variations though from fully elected judges to retention elections, effectively turning their judges into politicians too.

yostrovs• 2 years ago

If they strike down "Chevron", which they might just do this year, that will be what you're referring to.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-d...

303uru3• 2 years ago

SCOTUS has to be checked somehow. Make no mistake about it, this is another power grab. This SCOTUS is snatching up Executive and Congressional powers day after day and assigning them unto itself. Do Conservatives really want to live in a world where courts and often ultimately SCOTUS are deciding labor matters, which drugs are safe & efficacious, whether or not it's safe for PFAS to be in your drinking water? Because this, Chevron, and other cases being heard and under review are on the path to do just that.

dmatech2• 2 years ago

No, but it's perfectly fine for lawmakers to make laws setting these standards (ideally with the input of experts). That's how we get local building codes.

The ultimate power to make policy choices should be made by lawmakers who can be voted out. Bureaucrats are too insulated. An individual bureaucrat can't feasibly be fired by either a President or the Congress.

solardev2• 2 years ago

I think the Conservatives primarily want power redistributed to whoever's on their side in any given decade. The particular mechanisms and bureaucracies don't really matter, and it's fine if democratic pillars are destroyed in the process as long as "their guys" ultimately get what they want. The liberals seem more willing to play by the rules and not leave a bunch of collateral damage along the way, which is why they keep losing... every small by-the-book gain is overturned and overpowered tenfold with the next Conservative administration.

FWIW I think there's a difference here between the big-C Conservative politicians and judges who are hopelessly corrupt, vs the run-of-the-mill small-c conservative voters who keep voting for them because of virtue signals (guns, abortion, defense, anti-wokism, whatever). The corruption isn't really a high concern to them, either a positive or negative, as long as they get their values enshrined into political power.

It's not really SCOTUS vs the Executive, it's whatever pathway to power they have available at any given juncture in history. They're very good at pivoting and projecting! Not to say it's admirable, but it's undoubtedly very effective, having captured almost the entirety of the US power structure over the last decade while also striving to make sure their liberal opponents cannot easily reverse those gains. Having so thoroughly captured SCOTUS that they can rewrite/reinterpret the Constitution at will is just the latest move in a long series of such maneuvers over the past decades, skillfully executed.

duped2• 2 years ago

The fault here is thinking that Republicans operate in good faith or consistently. They don't. They just want to be able to persecute people, and maybe get richer along the way.

treyd• 2 years ago

Do Conservatives really want to live in a world where [...]

Yes that is literally what conservatives have always stood for since we developed the term "conservative" to stand for that kind of political stance. Back then it was to preserve the power of the French aristocracy over the rising calls for democracy. Today it's to preserve the power of the wealthy and over that of everyone that has to actually work for a living.

They use different tactics, deflections, and posturing to justify their positions, and are willing to give different kinds of concessions in order to achieve those goals today, but it's been essentially the same overarching theme for a couple hundred years. A well-functioning democracy (in this case, one where employees can organize to negotiate the terms of their employment) is an obstacle to them that they want to clear.

nemo44x• 2 years ago

Should be sent to the states where they belong. Congress and Exec just love creating unelected offices that perpetuate the regimes power without any democratic check. Just expand and consume more and more.

Local is best. Send this kind of thing back to states where it belongs.

tomoyoirl3• 2 years ago

I’m sorry, I don’t understand the mechanism of “absolute judicial supremacy”.

The judges are checked and balanced by executive appointment, and legislative confirmation. They also can be impeached by the legislature. Same as it ever was: perhaps this is no longer sufficient, but surely it is not new?

The legislature, setting up this agency as a parallel judiciary/executive that both prosecutes cases and judges them, while also insulated from the presidential oversight, is setting up something accountable only to Congress, and unchecked.

The supremacy here which you advocate here semi-explicitly is Congressional supremacy. It could be argued this is better! It is more directly democratic, after all, and it’s probably more like parliamentary systems. But it’s sure not what the US constitution went for in the eighteenth century, nor has anyone amended it since.

woodruffw5• 2 years ago

I meant in statutory matters. You're right that the judicial branch would still be checked in other matters, e.g. appointment and confirmation.

I don't deny that the judicial branch has the authority to review these semi-judicial schemes designed by the legislative branch. What I find concerning is the broader conclusion: that the legislative branch may effectively have no regulatory power behind its statutory power, and that all regulatory decisions or adjudications would have to flow through a judicial process instead of the competent agency or department.

In effect, this would both gum up the US's regulatory machinery by making legislative acts themselves toothless. That seems pretty bad to me, and not in keeping with the enumerated powers of each branch.

jltsiren2• 2 years ago

I think the issue is that the Supreme Court has established itself as a parallel legislative branch. It can arbitrarily choose to re-examine the constitutionality of an established thing, and it can also reverse its past opinions.

There should be a time limit beyond which the Supreme Court cannot act. If nobody has challenged the constitutionality of something in 10 or 20 years, it should be implicitly constitutional, and no court opinion should be allowed to change that. Similarly, if the Supreme Court has already made a decision, it should not change it unless the relevant laws or the relevant parts of the constitution have changed. The right way of changing the constitutional status of an established practice should be changing the constitution itself.

cnelsenmilt• 2 years ago

The clear solution should this stand is to include a Terms of Incorporation when a business is created stipulating that they waive their right to a trial and that any labor disputes will be settled by independent arbitration.

ImJamal• 2 years ago

Aren't corporations incorporated on the state level? Unless I am missing something at least one state would not include this in their terms and companies would flock to that state if they wanted trials.

hobotime3• 2 years ago

The courts have routinely said you can't sign your rights away. This has gotten muddy with arbitration clauses being sometimes upheld, but for example, you can't sign a contract to entry into slavery for example.

rob742• 2 years ago

Amazon's argument can be basically anything that will give the Supreme Court an excuse to accept it...

newZWhoDis2• 2 years ago

Slowly but surely people are starting the realize that the vast majority of the federal government’s regulatory machinery is illegal/unconstitutional.

The ATF is one of the worst examples, but the NLRB here is also wrong.

I understand this will come with a reflexive downvote from many who don’t like the outcome, but this has been warned about for decades: Administrative law isn’t. The executive has no right to act as the police, legislative, and judiciary at the same time.

This is true even if it gives you the outcomes you personally want.

tbrownaw• 2 years ago

I understand this will come with a reflexive downvote from many who don’t like the outcome

Are you sure they're not from people who think this sort of preemptive griping looks like a manipulation attempt.

sershe2• 2 years ago

It's not judicial supremacy other than the constitutional authority of the courts to interpret the law. Congress still passes the law - if they want it to be interpreted differently, they can just be more specific. In this case especially, it improves checks and balances - judges will check the executives, instead of executive-appointed quasi-judges with obvious incentive issues.

Frankly while I don't think the "originalist" interpretation here is correct, clearly early congresses delegated broad and vague authority to executive in various matters, I actually think it's one of the weaknesses of the original intent of the founders. I assume, given that the early American elite was a relatively small group of people with a lot in common, they didn't foresee the need to micromanage each other in such matters.

Now that executive employs millions of people, I think it's necessary. Like, when CDC can suspend probably the most common private contract in the country (rent) under the delegated authority to fight diseases, this is a step too far for me; and even if you don't think so, what would you think of China-style extreme lockdowns? There needs to be a way to draw the line over vague delegation of power. If IMPROVES checks and balances - judicial can check the executive. Congress can still explicitly give executive the authority it needs and override the judges.

Same for NLRB - pass labor law as the normal laws that the normal judges can interpret.

Next stop, make Commerce Clause unimportant again ;)

ragamuffin• 2 years ago

Slavery was constitutional.

beauzero• 2 years ago

Actually still is if you are found convicted of a crime. 13th amendment section 1. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/

throwawa142232• 2 years ago

On the face of it Amazon seems to be clearly in the right. What's the argument the other way?

tomoyoirl3• 2 years ago

Let’s be unpopular today…

The Board may be a good thing, it may be a bad thing, ane plaintiffs have an agenda (100%). But the court is not supposed to rule on that at all, or what is right and wrong. It’s supposed to rule on the law.

If the NLRB they’re operating a parallel court system outside of the regular court system, where they’re both a prosecutor outside normal Executive Branch oversight, and a judge outside the Judicial Branch, that’s exactly the sort of thing a Supreme Court full of (establishment) conservatives is going to strike down, not because they hate labor (though it might also be true) but because it violates the power structures prescribed by the Constitution, and their philosophy is that these should actually be upheld. The legislature doesn’t just get to set that sort of a thing up to be independent of the other two branches, any more than they get to have a general police power; it’s a usurpation.

woodruffw5• 2 years ago

The legislature doesn’t just get to set that sort of a thing up to be independent of the other two branches, any more than they get to have a general police power; it’s a usurpation.

This is a profound misunderstanding of how checks and balances work. The legislature absolutely has the ability to produce statues and dictate their regulation, and the judicial branch absolutely has the ability to conduct judicial review over statues and whether their regulation exceeds the scope of the proscribed statue. Neither has supremacy over either; they're equally empowered branches of the government.

What the judicial branch isn't empowered to do is to diminish the regulatory authority of the legislative branch. It can review individual laws and their regulatory scope, but it can't erase Article I, Section 8 itself.

feedforward3• 2 years ago

This is the argument conservatives made in the 1950s and 1960s against blacks having the right to vote, drink from water fountains, swim in public swimming pools, sit anywhere on a bus etc. They said they were not against blacks per se, but against federal encroachment, communists in the civil rights movement etc.

jrs235• 2 years ago

Corporations are created [and recognized] by and UNDER Government. Their owners are provided the privilege of limited liability because of it. IF they wish to not be under the regulations then the owners can operate outside of their corporate veil and be fully liable for any and all actions they collectively take...

hgh• 2 years ago

These seems to dovetail with an existing case involving the SEC and it's authority that is under review by the Supreme Court:

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/sec-v-jarkesy-the-t...

Osmose4• 2 years ago

What gets me about opposition to unions as limiting a free market is that unions solve a very real problem with the efficiency of employee negotiations. A union is a much more efficient way to discover what the employees want from their workplaces than negotiating individually with them one by one.

When negotiations break down, the union makes it clear and potentially strikes or takes other steps to pressure the company. When individual employee negotiations break down, you get churn and underperformance and dissatisfaction. People will often see burnout or mismanagement and assume it's an individual issue vs a breakdown in the contract between workers and the company.

303uru3• 2 years ago

You know what else gets me about union opposition? Unions help everyone. When I was managing union employees, despite not being in the union as a manager myself, I was paid better, had better benefits, etc... Rising tides lift all ships.

MandieD• 2 years ago

That’s generally how it works in Germany. We have had more strikes than usual the last few years, but they’re usually really short.

In my particular industry, having a very strong but pragmatic union that the companies know can make their very expensive production lines stop motivates everyone to quickly work things out.

I decided to finally join IG Metall after they got us a quickly-negotiated 8% raise during the post-Covid inflation. They were realistic enough to give phase-in time, so there’s still been some sting for us, but we’ve not felt motivated to strike.

caballeto• 2 years ago

Unions do not help everyone. Unions often impose artificially high labor costs, which results in a lower amount of jobs being created. The real impact soon becomes apparent when companies start to lay off those union employees because their margins are slim and they try to automate as much as possible, instead of hiring people to do the job.

See the recent UPS layoff, just after 6 months of a great union deal: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/difficult-disappointing-ups-l...

jmyeet• 2 years ago

These efforts may succeed.

The current Supreme Court is on a tear of revoking precedents and inventing new legal standards. One is historical tradition, which is nonsense. Another is the major questions doctrine, which is also nonsense. It basically says that if the court decides an issue is important enough the court can overrule the other two branches.

This is coming to a head this term with a case that threatens to overturn another Supreme Court precedent called Chevron. This 40 year old decision says that courts should give deference to regulatory agencies where there’s ambiguity.

Congress and multiple administrations have relied upon this when writing law. It’s what allows the administrative state to exist and function.

This court seems set to decide that Congress has to be explicit on every little thing, which is completely unworkable. And that’s the point: to cripple executive oversight.

It’s the rich and powerful neutering regulations and oversight to the detriment of everyone else so they can make even more money because regulations hurt profits.

That’s all that’s going on here.

dmatech2• 2 years ago

The major questions doctrine itself is a relaxation of strict separation of powers. Normally there is strict separation between lawmaking, judicial functions, and enforcement. MQD at least allows the "minor questions" to be exceptions. I know that a lot of people think separation of powers is inefficient and outdated, but it's still the law of the land.

sanderjd4• 2 years ago

I see the "major questions doctrine" the opposite way. I see it as a power grab by the judiciary to deign to decide that some things are too important to trust to the text Congress wrote into the laws they passed. The Court is telling Congress "you weren't specific enough when you wrote this law and the agency is taking advantage of your ambiguity, and we won't allow it". Instead, the Court should say, "what this agency is doing is plausibly within the bounds of this legal text due to its ambiguity".

If Congress would like to clarify, they are free to do so. The Court should not be saying "we believe this is too important of an issue for ambiguity to allow this action", they should only ever say "we believe this action is unambiguously in violation of this law".

(And FWIW, what I described is pretty much just what Chevron deference already is.)

thegrim332• 2 years ago

Meta: I find it so hard to believe this comment thread is comprised of actual citizens/humans making these comments and not shills/bots intentionally manipulating the conversation.

I truly wish I had the ability to look into accounts and see their post history, connection history, see what accounts they have, see which accounts are upvoting and downvoting, see if this is actually organic conversation or to what degree it's all manipulated.

How insane is it to be at the point where we have no visibility into whether we're conversing with other people or are being completely manipulated? I don't know how society can move forwards like this. We need some sort of transparency.

erik_seaberg2• 2 years ago

I use my True Name™ to remind myself this could be subject to legal discovery (through no fault of mine). But I like the marketplace of ideas not caring about the pedigree of a good idea.

Andrex2• 2 years ago

I don't think the idea of a "public square" is long for the internet, if it hasn't already been abandoned. Enforced social (and possibly evolutionary) norms scale in-person to a couple hundred people, but not thousands or millions of semi-/anonymous participants.

If I want to be sure I'm talking to real people, the only way is to know them IRL. My personal solution is to set up my own town squares exclusive to my friends, but that doesn't scale either.

I don't know if there's a solution.

yieldcrv• 2 years ago

well I have a gripe with the existence of Administrative Law Judges

but ouch, didn't see the NLRB coming being the one on the chopping block to cause this change

hope congress, the people, or the states and their people will create a system that is more durable

I’m all for accelerating this outcome, just always a shock to see what angle it comes from

exabrial• 2 years ago

I think the problem is the original purpose of unions has been a line bit distorted. Originally it was supposed to protect workers from getting injured and making human capital just expensive enough to make your employees valuable assets you retain.

I have to be careful with my next comment, because reading it on the internet can sound like I personally look down another group of people, which I do not; my goal is to point out that it is not skilled labor.

When we’ve gotten to the point of “package handler unions” and “barista unions”, I think the system is abused. I completely agree with thongs like fire sprinkler installer unions on the other hand.

The other issue i have is forced union dues. Nobody should be forced into paying a private organization money. That is comically unconstitutional

benpacker• 2 years ago

Most of this is inaccurate.

The history of unions is long and complex. Although there has been tension historically between craft unionism and industrial unionism (the original term for lower skilled work), that was mostly in the pre-war period and not really related to the purpose of unions.

No one is forced into paying union dues now anymore than someone is forced to take any particular job. Workers negotiate a contract with their employer that includes a commitment to include all employees as part of the union. It's just a contract.

imglorp• 2 years ago

Regardless of this terrible concept, at-will workers will always have substantial power here. Any time they walk out as a unit, the company is dead until the rift is resolved.

Undoing the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 would be a tragedy but even then, the workers were getting employers' ears.

macinjosh• 2 years ago

No one ITT mentions that the constitution can be ammeneded. Instead of arcane arguments we could try to make new compromises with each other.

Farfignoggen3• 2 years ago

NLRB was set up by Congress to enforce the National Labor Relations ACT! So it's basically a court that's set up to adjudicate Labor Disputes and enforce Labor Laws/Regulations and promote negotiated solutions rather than Strikes and Walkouts. And in fact if there's a strike planned then the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service has to be notified in advance of any Strike Vote! Go on strike without notifying the FMCS and the strike is not legal and can result in a Union losing their case there in Labor Court(NLRB).

So if one wants to go back to the old days of the Pinkerton Thugs and wildcat strikes and outright social conflict then just try and get rid of the NLRB and related Laws and Courts.

zmgsabst2• 2 years ago

Right — but there’s a broad question of if Congress can establish special courts. This is being asked about more than labor, including taxes and regulations.

The rise of special administrative courts is arguably denying people their rights to be heard in courts, which while you say benefits average people here, is also harming them when in disputes with the FDA/USDA.

Should we save labor unions at the cost of Big Ag destroying small farmers?

Unfortunately, there’s not a simple solution here. (Though, I’m generally against the rise of the administrative state — so I think special courts are inherently wrong.)

nateglims2• 2 years ago

Big ag also has many advantages in the regular court system. Like simply having more capital.

Farfignoggen3• 2 years ago

Corporations are not the same as People and The Citizens United SCOTUS decision was the most slippery slope there. And if you want to Weather some really serious social strife not seen since the last Gilded age then just go right back to the late 19th century and early 20th and look at Labor History in the US.

I do not see what this has to do with Small Farmers any more that any other business and really if you like depressions then just keep moving more wealth from the Middle Classes and moving the up to the 1-5% richest in the US and you will get that depression to clean/balance that all out there. The US is a consumer economy and the Middle Class in the US is Directly/Indirectly the creation of the Labor Movement in the US and there's no getting around that fact in the history of the US. The US has been in a New Gilded age since the 1980s and that's about ready to begin being turned back towards being more Labor Focused and moving the Tax Burden back onto the Corporations and off of the backs of the Middle Class that are not really Middle Class if one looks at the cost of Living currently!

skissane2• 2 years ago

Right — but there’s a broad question of if Congress can establish special courts. This is being asked about more than labor, including taxes and regulations.

The issue isn't with Congress establishing special courts – it is establishing these special courts as part of the executive branch instead of as part of the judicial branch.

If Congress was to establish a specialist Article III "United States Labor Relations Court", the constitutional argument being made here by Amazon/SpaceX/etc would not apply. Instead, Congress decided to establish a "National Labor Relations Board", which is not an Article III court, it is an Article I tribunal, [0] and the constitutional question being raised here is about the constitutionality of Article I tribunals.

(I doubt SCOTUS is going to find all Article I tribunals unconstitutional – military courts-martial are an example of an Article I tribunal which SCOTUS is highly unlikely to find to be unconstitutional – but it is plausible they may soon [1] rule against their use in regulatory matters such as labor or securities regulation.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tribunals_in_the_Unite...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_v._Jarkesy

arunabha• 2 years ago

I'm surprised there is so little interest in this story on HN. There are three different submissions for this which reached the front page, but then rapidly dropped to below page 3.

Amazon joins companies arguing US labor board is unconstitutional

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