American Workers, The Supreme Court and President Obama

There were several decisions recently made public, from the Supreme Court. As I am not an attorney, it took quite a bit of reading and research to understand the basis behind the decision of the court in these matters. Plus, there are more to come, which may be more confusing to the average citizen such as myself.

Yet, there is one where I find the impetus behind one side’s behavior easy to understand while finding the decision of the Court, while not as easy to understand, explainable.

However, there is one aspect of this one, very narrow decision that I do find hard to understand. In order to delve into what I find hard to understand, let us discuss what I DO understand first.

I am speaking of the Court’s decision in which the President had “over-reach” in his Recess Appointments. Now, full disclosure dictates that I mention that I have long been a Democratic voter. I inherited this from my Italian immigrant, grandparents. They were adamant that everyone, regardless of money or property, should have equal opportunity in our great nation. This opportunity would include each persons’ right to vote, to work and happiness.

My grandparents came to this country just ahead of Mussolini, Hitler and the rest of the turmoil, which defined Europe in the 1930’s. My grandparents understood socialism, communism and fascism in a way that most Americans do not. They not only lived through all of these governmental systems vying for a way to assert themselves at different times in Italy, they absorbed their impact in some of the cruelest ways.

Bottom line, my grandparents believed in the American way of government. Sure, there were glitches that occurred while my grandparents were alive. However, compared to what they had witnessed prior to their arrival in the U.S., they considered them if not trivial, then fixable.

My grandfather died when I was eight years old, my grandmother before I was sixteen. Politics was not a subject that we spent much time discussing. However, I do know that my grandparents considered our government to be a mechanism forward. If one had a problem that could not be fixed in any other way then, one had the option of going to their local elected representative.

They were businesses owners, which entails employees, payroll, and labor law. Of course, they had been on both sides of this equation in their lives that, I believe, is what precipitated their compassion towards their workers as well as their customers. Not once did one of their employees, to my knowledge, find an occasion to call in the Union or the National Labor Relations Board on my grandpa and Noni.

However, this is not true of every business in the U.S. and, particularly not in the current labor environment. Which brings us back to the Supreme Court decision I wish to discuss, President Obama’s, Congressional Recess Appointments.

As most Americans will recall, the current Congress has been described as the “Less Than Do-Nothing, Congress”. This title has derived from the fact that our currently seated Congressmen and women have passed fewer laws than the former “Do-Nothing Congress”, which was seated January 3, 1947 until January 3, 1949. That Congress, the 80^th Congress, passed 906 bills, mostly pro-business bills.

If this sounds familiar, it is only due to the “pro-business” classification. Our current Congress, the 112^th Congress has actually passed fewer laws than the aforementioned 80^th Congress.

Finding the exact number of laws enacted during the 112^th Congress is a bit time consuming. I do know however, that this Congress did hold 57 Anti-Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) votes during their tenure. The information as to how many bills were or were not passed is merely to be used as a foundation to ascertain your own opinion of The Courts’ ruling.

You may have heard, many times in fact, that during the past five years of President Obama’s Presidency, the fights over confirming his nominees for many different openings in our government. For example, many federal judgeships went unfilled due to the inability of Congress to confirm any of the President’s nominees. Alternatively, perhaps you had heard about the inability of the 111^th Congress to confirm Elizabeth Warren to head the consumer protection agency she created. Maybe you heard via your favorite news program (unless of course, it was Fox News) or newspaper that our duly elected President has had a terrible time getting most of his nominees appointed in a timely manner?

Now, suppose you were running a business…or a government, and found that few if any of your supervisory type positions were being filled. Perhaps, upon inspection, you found that the reason behind this was not due to a lack of good candidates available. No, the reason for these vacancies was due to uncooperative (for the lack of a better term) co-workers who were just not being cooperative. would not show up for the interviews, refused to peruse the materials and resumes provided and then sat on the procedure as long as possible?

Your business may fail due to this lack of cooperation yet, you are ultimately responsible. What do you do? As most of us may recall, when something similar happened to President W. Bush, he appointed his nominees during the recesses taken by Congress during the year. This could be a solution considered both expedient and elegant by some.

Well, for W, it was. For President Obama, not so much. Even though recess appointments are constitutional, it seems that the Congresses in question did not officially “recess”. Their strategy was to merely have their geographically nearest member, go in every three days during the normal “recess” times and call themselves “In Session”. Although no actual work occurred, Congress was technically in session. (At this point, I feel I must point out that both of these Congress’ worked less than 50% of the time of most preceding members yet, received higher salaries.)

During this time of complete breakdown of this process, President Obama took the “Recess Appointment” route in order to fill the National Labor Relations Board. It had been operating at about half strength and, it had a predominance of only one party on the board. In order to ensure fairness for the working people of the United States, plus to clear up the backlog of what needed to be done, the President made "recess" appointments. If you are a worker, you should understand that this was done to protect you, your family and our economy.

Those "game-of-life" referees known as the Supreme Court decided, unanimously, that somehow this was a rule broken. Evidently, according to the Court, he should have just let us all go to Hell in a Handbasket! Even though the behavior of Congress did not really uphold the spirit of the law, it did uphold the letter of the law, according to the Supremes. How does this help, our country?

For this reason we now have Conservative rhetoric being trumpeted as if from on High! However, anyone who has ever played a sport, a game or life knows one thing. Many times in life, the “letter of the law” has nothing whatsoever to do with real life. The President, OUR President, was trying to keep our country running. If the purpose of this ruling was to intercede on the behalf of the American people, could there not have been a better way?