Fixed for the union

The National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday continued its ongoing transformation from an impartial arbiter of union-management disputes into a full-blown subsidiary of Big Labor.

Just months after brazenly filing suit against Boeing to force the company to abandon plans to move some of its unionized operations in Washington state to a nonunion plant in South Carolina, the board this week unveiled new rules for union-organizing elections that tilt heavily toward labor interests.

With private-sector union membership at new lows -- and unable to convince Congress to rig the game -- labor bosses now resort to manipulating the system through a sympathetic bureaucracy.

"This is just the latest outrage from a runaway agency," Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., told The Wall Street Journal.

The new rules essentially would discourage companies from hiring outside consultants to fight organizing campaigns and speed up the time it now takes to hold a union-organizing vote, thus reducing the opportunity management has to present its case to employees. Union officials have long complained that employers engage in delaying tactics when faced with the prospect of unionization.

In fact, however, the median time between when a union files a petition for an election and when an election is actually held is currently only 38 days. That's hardly characteristic of a system beset by interminable delays.

The grossly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act -- which would have allowed unions to organize through an easily manipulated card-check process rather than through a secret ballot election -- died a slow death on Capitol Hill. This is Big Labor's fallback effort to fix the rules so it can win by fiat what it can't win by voluntary persuasion.

Let's hope enough members of Congress are watching.