The U.S. labor movement may be a mere shadow of what it was before union busters started to whack at its underpinnings in the 1980s. But the National Labor Relations Board is still finding plenty of ways to get involved in the politics of labor-management relations.

The latest controversy stirred up by the Obama-influenced board is its attempt to "improve" the union representation election process by speeding it up.

The NLRB passed a speed-up regulation in 2011 that irritated big business groups to distraction. It required businesses facing an election to give the union lists of email addresses and phone numbers of all covered employees. The resurrected reg would also consolidate appeals of union votes into a single post-election process and allow for electronic filing of union petitions.