Obama’s NLRB just redefined the word “employer” and it’s going to be bad

You can rightly complain about the things which go on inside the White House, the State Department, the Justice Department or the EPA and all of the headline grabbing controversies which erupt from them. None of them, however, may be up to nearly as much mischief as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) though it doesn’t seem to catch the attention of the media nearly as much. This week they were at it again and while a bit on the wonky side, a new wrinkle in the rules could spell big trouble for America’s employers and many, many workers.

The decision in question came in the case of waste management firm Browning-Ferris. The board has found that they can be held liable for the actions and policies of subcontractors providing services to them and even be forced to negotiate with the big labor unions on behalf of those workers, treating them as a “joint employer” of the subcontracted or franchise employees.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Thursday handed down one of its biggest decisions of President Obama’s tenure, ruling that companies can be held responsible for labor violations committed by their contractors.

While the ruling from the independent agency specifically deals with the waste management firm Browning-Ferris, the so-called “joint employer” decision could have broad repercussions for the business world, particularly for franchise companies.

Opponents of the action warn the ruling could hurt businesses as diverse as restaurants, retailers, manufacturers and construction firms, as well as hotels, cleaning services and staffing agencies.

There are two different, primary areas of concern here, both of which will be hit hard by this ruling. One is the ubiquitous presence of subcontracting companies and temporary personnel agencies who provide direct support to employers by taking on specific, often short term tasks or providing workers on a temporary basis to fill specific talent requirements. These show up in almost every industry you’d care to name. A second class of businesses which will fall under this are companies which engage franchise owners to carry their brand, but who operate largely as their own independent outlets. (The biggest example is McDonald’s, which actually owns and operates less than 20 percent of the restaurants you see. The rest are all franchises.) In each case, the direct employer of the workers is held responsible for their own policies and any negotiations with their workers.

But under this new definition of “joint employer” the main corporation using the services of these subcontractors or leasing out franchise rights can be forced into union negotiations (and sued) relating to the employees of other companies and for things which take place totally outside of their control. As Daniel Fischer at Forbes points out, this could spell the end of the line for many employers.

In so doing, the board’s Democratic majority reversed several decades of practice where companies had to exercise “direct and immediate” control over workers with a new regime in which regulators will examine each case for signs a company has the potential to affect pay and working conditions. It will have a large impact on how franchisers like McDonald’s do business, since they can potentially be held liable for hiring and firing decisions by any of their thousands of individual franchisees and even routine business decisions will be examined in light of how they affect union organizing efforts.

“If this goes into effect then the franchiser has to step in and have a standard for hiring, human resources, payroll, everything,” said Jania Bailey, a board member of the International Franchising Association and chief executive of FranNet, a consulting firm that matches franchisees and franchisors. “It basically nullifies this independent business model.”

This is a pretty clever move by the NLRB. If their goal is to get the fingers of the big labor unions into every nook and cranny of business, there isn’t a much better way to do it. Now, under this new standard, if an employer is judged as having “the potential” to affect wages and working conditions at a franchise outlet or staffing agency, they can be held liable and immediately be forced into negotiations with the Teamsters or whoever else has their thumb on the scale for that type of operation. So how will the larger employers respond? Probably by cutting ties with those companies. Why take the risk if the benefits of bringing in such help are outweighed by the potential union hassles?

This could wind up costing God only knows how many jobs. Of course, that doesn’t seem to be a priority for the NLRB, so it’s all good I suppose.

• Share on Facebook2K

The Iran Deal, Side Deal and Obama’s Myriad of Bugled Lies

By Craig Andresen – The National Patriot and Right Side Patriots oncprworldwidemedia.net

Now that we know the truth regarding one of the Iran deal’s side deals…that the U.N. and the IAEA will allow the 7th century barbarians of the Iranian regime to inspect their own Parchin nuclear site and use their own equipment to gather samples before submitting their own reports showing there is nothing at Parchin to worry about…it’s time to look a little deeper into this new development…or should we call it a new scandal?

For weeks, since word of side deals between Iran and the IAEA went public, concern has grown regarding the contents of those side deals.

Obama told us all that it was no big thing…routine was the language he used. He said “If Iran cheats, we’ll know it,” and that the safeguards were all in place.

Obama sock-puppet, John Kerry called the side deals…routine…and said that nothing in the deals was based on trust. In fact, his direct quote was…“Nothing in this deal is built on trust. Nothing.”

No great surprise…Obama was lying…again and also no great surprise…

So too was sock-puppet Kerry.

According to Obama town liar, Josh Earnest on June 26th 2015…“I know there has beena suggestion by some Republicans that there are some agreements that were cut off to the side. The fact is, this is a critical part of the agreement.”

Critical because it keeps real, international inspectors from inspecting the site where Iran has, for more than a decade, conducted their clandestine nuclear weapons research?

It would seem so.

The Obama regime, if you weren’t aware of it, had a Twitter account…@theirandeal set up to ply social media as a surrogate liar to the masses and back then, in late June, the White House employed it stating…“There’s no ‘secret’ or ‘side’ deal with Iran. Congress has everything we have on the #IranDeal”

Oh really?

That was before the Obama regime was forced to admit there were side deals…at least two that we know of…between the 7th century barbarians of the Islamic Republic and the IAEA.

National Security and Sunday Talk Show Liar, Susan Rice got into the fabrication-fest withthis tweeted statement…“Lots of misperceptions re the #IranDeal, This is a good deal that should be judged on its merits, not distortions.”

Once the side deals were public fact, in early July…the Obama regime tried to spin them this way…telling us that they weren’t really side deals at all…rather…nothing more than standard operating procedure when international arms deals are made. But I thought they were, and are, insistent that Iran was not, nor ever have, been pursuing nuclear weapons.

The problem is…when the regime starts lying, and employing multiple people to buglethose lies, things get confusing. Case in point…while State Department liar John Kirby was bugling that there WERE no side deals a month or two ago…National Security liar Susan Rice was bugling that the side deals were arrangements between the IAEA and Iran apart from the Kerry/Obama deal. Rice also made sure to bugle a little more…stating that the side deals were NOT secret…that the Obama regime KNEW their contents, were…”satisfied” with them and that the regime would hold classified briefings with selected members of Congress regarding those side deals.

It’s important here to point out that the Obama regime has steadfastly REFUSED to share with ANY members of congress, the actual side deals themselves and have gone so far as to make it clear, they would NOT allow any members of congress to read the deals for themselves.

So…Iran will be inspecting their own primary nuclear weapons research facility and…Obama will be telling selected members of congress what’s in the side deals. The results will be…bone-crushingly similar in both cases…Iran will tell the IAEA only what they WANT to tell the IAEA and Obama will tell selected members of congress ONLY what HE wants to tell them and the summery of both reports will be…”nothing to see here…move along.”

But all the obtuse, contradictory bugling of lies came to a sudden, thunderous end onWednesday afternoon when the AP revealed that they had actually seen one of the side deals…”Iran, in an unusual arrangement, will be allowed to use its own experts to inspect a site it allegedly used to develop nuclear arms under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work.”

The AP continued with…”The Parchin deal is a separate, side agreement worked out between the IAEA and Iran,” and with…”Without divulging its contents, the Obama administration has described the document as nothing more than a routine technical arrangement between Iran and the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency on the particulars of inspecting the site,” followed by…”The agreement diverges from normal inspection procedures between the IAEA and a member country by essentially ceding the agency’s investigative authority to Iran. It allows Tehran to employ its own experts and equipment in the search for evidence for activities that it has consistently denied — trying to develop nuclear weapons…Olli Heinonen, who was in charge of the Iran probe as deputy IAEA director general from 2005 to 2010, said he can think of no instance where a country being probed was allowed to do its own investigation. Iran has refused access to Parchin for years and has denied any interest in — or work on — nuclear weapons. Based on U.S., Israeli and other intelligence and its own research, the IAEA suspects that the Islamic Republic may have experimented with high-explosive detonators for nuclear arms at that military facility and other weapons-related work elsewhere. The IAEA has repeatedly cited evidence, based on satellite images, of possible attempts to sanitize the site since the alleged work stopped more than a decade ago.”

My, oh my…what a tangled web Obama weaves when he lies to deceive.

Now here’s an interesting question…since the AP does not have to reveal their source…just how DID they get a look AT that side deal anyway?

Obviously, since Obama never wanted it seen, and since Iran threatened to KILL an IAEA inspector if HE divulged the contents of the side deals…it was leaked to the AP but…by whom?

Who has an axe to grind with Obama right now? Who’s been on the receiving end of recent leaks and who is doing her best imitation of a lathe to spin her way out of the damage certain leaks have caused?

Who was trying to hide her emails, her private email accounts and her private servers? Who has been busy deleting emails and documents from said email accounts and said servers? Who is vindictive enough to leak an unsigned copy of the side deal to the AP inretribution for making it public knowledge that she has violated the Espionage Act of 1917?

Drip…drip…drip…my guess is that somebody obviously knows it is the Obama regime, on orders from the DNC that has most likely offered some form of protection for her right hand aide in return for outing some of those classified, top secret email transactions and she’s pissed.

Let’s face it…it would take somebody with “connections in all the right places,” such as having a (potted) plant inside the Department of State to get their hands on such a document as apparently, it takes a village to raise a leak like that.

And that leave just one last question…who really struck this and other side deals? Was it really just between the IAEA and Iran or was there possibly a third party involved?

For the best possible answer to that question, we must step back just a bit to the deadline for the Obama/Kerry deal. That being June 30th, 2015. Kerry missed that deadline. Then, it was extended by one week. That deadline was also missed. After that…another few days of deadline extension…again missed and another few days, until Jully 11th. Oops…missed it again but finally…on July 14th…the deal was done.

Are we really supposed to believe that? Are we really, in light of all the myriad of bugling lies supposed to believe that the side deals, supposedly between the IAEA and Iran exclusively were made AFTER that?

I, for one, do not believe it.

I believe that the deal, the Kerry/Obama deal as it were, was completed either by the first or second deadline and that Iran wanted more, threatened to trash the deal unless they GOT more and Kerry, on Obama orders, then mediated the side deals between the IAEA and Iran so as not to have Obama’s fingerprints on them as those side deals, had they been in the main body of the deal, would have HAD to be made accessible to every member of congress…something Obama is refusing to do with the side deals.

Don’t get to thinking that either the deal itself or the side deals are the product of stupidity on Obama’s part. They aren’t. They are exactly what an Islamist would have wanted, insisted upon and made happen so that the 7th century barbarians of the Iranian regime would have guaranteed, unrestrained capabilities to develop nuclear weapons with which they would immediately threaten the very existence of our allies in the region and ultimately use to threaten the United States.

Why take 52 hostages when you can hold 315 million for ransom?

I suspect the deal AND the side deals are the direct product of the Islamist in the White House but maybe Senator Ted Cruz said it best…

“Enough of the concessions, capitulations and backroom deals that make up President Obama’s catastrophic nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The most recent revelation that Iran will be selecting its own inspectors to verify thenature of its nuclear program is made all the more egregious by the fact that as the single largest contributor to the IAEA (support that is mandated in the deal) United States taxpayers will be paying for a farce that is a direct threat to their own security.”

“This is not a partisan issue. It is not about President Obama’s political legacy. It is about the future of our country, and that of our allies. We have to stop this disastrous deal.”

While congress can only halt our end of the deal, it would prevent Iran from raking in nearly $150 billion dollars which they would use to further their nuclear weapons programs at a facility, Parchin, that they and only they will be monitoring and voting against the deal, then overriding Obama’s veto of that vote would send a message to our allies in the region that we, stand against Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.

As I said in yesterday’s article, any member of congress that votes FOR this insipid and dangerous deal should be considered as having committed an act of treason and Obama…for having insisted on this deal…has already crossed that line.

Netanya: Israel's French capital

Record-breaking numbers of new immigrants from France are making Netanya their home, leading the city to become "indistinguishable from Nice", and establishing a center of French culture in Israel

Associated Press

Published:  08.01.15, 14:11 / Israel News

The coastal city of Netanya markets itself as the "Israeli Riviera" and walking along its main pedestrian boulevard, one would be hard-pressed to tell it apart from its twin city of Nice. Barely a word of Hebrew is spoken, and real estate ads, restaurant menus and cafe conversations are mostly in French.

• Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter 

An increase in anti-Semitic attacks by Muslim extremists in France, home to the world's third-largest Jewish population, has spawned an unprecedented wave of immigration to Israel. Netanya, with its seaside chic and established French-speaking community, has become their top destination.

France in Netanya (Photo: Ido Erez)

Last year, for the first time, France was Israel's top source of immigrants, according to the Jewish Agency. A record 7,200 French Jews arrived in 2014, double the number from the previous year. Of those, about 2,000 came to Netanya, a Mediterranean city whose beaches remind many new arrivals of their Moroccan, Tunisian or Algerian origins.


The surge, which marked the first time in Israeli history that more than 1 percent of a Western country's Jewish population immigrated in a single year, came even before the shooting rampage that killed four Jews in a Paris kosher supermarket in January and devastated the community's already shaky sense of security.


For Fanny Rhoum, a 33-year-old mother of two whose children went to school across from the Hyper Cacher, the supermarket where the attack happened, that was the tipping point. Three days after the attack, she came to Israel to start planning her move.

A solidarity rally in Netanya after the Paris attacks (Photo: Ido Erez).

"We had become paranoid ... every event brought our departure closer," she said Wednesday upon receiving her Israeli ID card in Netanya, just two days after arriving on a special flight from Paris with another 200 immigrants.


"Here we get the feeling that we can protect ourselves. There we have the impression that we are on our own and if, God forbid, something happens we will have to manage."

France in Netanya (Photo: Ido Erez)

Seated nearby, 63-year-old Jeanette Malka said she waited for her retirement to move to Israel and now hopes her children and grandchildren will join her. "It's no place to raise Jewish children," she said of France. "We like Netanya a lot. We feel at home here."


Her husband, Chaim, was clearly relishing wearing his small black kipah, something he said he feared to do in public in Paris.


Experts say European Jews have not felt this threatened since World War II, when 6 million Jews were murdered in the Nazi Holocaust. Jews have been targeted in Belgium, Denmark and other European countries, but France has seen the worst of it. Jews have increasingly reported assaults and intimidation, mostly from Muslim extremists. While some attacks have been linked to anger at Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, most have been of an anti-Semitic nature.


France's Jewish community of 500,000 is the largest in Europe. Though Jews make up less than 1 percent of the population, French officials say more than 50 percent of all reported racist attacks in 2014 were directed against them.

France in Netanya (Photo: Ido Erez)

Ariel Kandel, the Jewish Agency's director of French immigration, said many immigrants also come to Israel out of Zionist fervor or for economic reasons. Unemployment has hovered around 10 percent in France since 2009, compared to less than 5 percent in Israel.


But while annual migration numbers have historically hovered between 1,000 to 2,000, he said the exodus kicked off after the 2012 shooting attack against a Jewish school Toulouse that killed three children and a rabbi.


"After that, I just couldn't stay there anymore," said Ida Mardoukh, a 45-year-old mother of three who moved from Toulouse to Netanya. "There are attacks in Israel too, but this is home. At least here we can live as Jews."


Following the January killings at the kosher supermarket, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rushed to Paris and openly urged the country's Jews to move to Israel. The Jewish Agency reports that 2015 has already seen a 10 percent bump from last year's record numbers.

A solidarity rally in Netanya after the Paris attacks (Photo: Ido Erez.

European Jews are divided on the question of immigration to Israel. While maintaining close ties to Israel, their community leaders have urged people to stay in their homelands.


The trend has also been deeply troubling for the French government, with top officials pleading with Jews to stay and warning that a mass migration of the community would be seen as a failure of the The trend has also been deeply troubling for the French government, witrepublic.


France takes pride in its inclusiveness and the Jews' 2,000-year history in the country. It was the first country in Europe to grant Jews full civil rights, in the immediate wake of the 1789 French Revolution. It has had two Jewish prime ministers, and former President Nicolas Sarkozy has Jewish ancestry.


Arriving in Israel, the French immigrants have brought some of that history with them, as well as a French sense of style, culture and food.

France in Netanya (Photo: Ido Erez)

Nowhere is that more on display than in Netanya, affectionately known as the French "bubble." Entire neighborhoods have become French-speaking and the busy central promenade is regularly bustling with cafe dwellers, smoking, drinking coffee and eating croissants. Bakeries offer authentic baguettes and brioches, and French music plays as the sandy beach beckons in the background.


"They want to be near the sea and near their families," explained Kandel, of the Jewish Agency.


Freddo Pachter, who heads Netanya's French absorption project, said the city has embraced them fully, well aware of their particular needs. Most of the newcomers speak nothing but French, and the city has adjusted accordingly, launching a French language website and ensuring there are French speakers in schools and workplaces to help ease the transition.

Unlike previous waves of refugees, Pachter said the French immigrants were mainly educated professionals with strong Zionist ideals.


"Israel wants to invest in them because it knows that they will stay and it's a long-term investment," he said. "They are like fresh blood for the body."