NEW YORK – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) conducted a training seminar yesterday for its new union “ambush election” rules at a New York City union office and is moving forward with the new rules, despite opposition from lawmakers and employers.

Earlier this month, both the U.S. House and Senate passed resolutions to stop NLRB from implementing its “ambush election” rule. The rule was finalized in December 2014, shortening the length of time in which a labor union certification election is held — currently a median 38 days — to as little as 11 days. However, the House and Senate’s resolutions were largely symbolic gestures, since they do not have the requisite votes necessary to override President Obama’s veto of the resolutions, which he issued yesterday afternoon.

Under the new rules, an employer must respond to any union election petition within eight calendar days, excluding federal holidays — a fact that even NLRB General Counsel Richard Griffin forgot during a recent congressional hearing. The timeline for the election has also been sped up.

Now, the NLRB, the federal government's top labor arbiter, is distributing training materials to its regional offices, which oversee local elections. The board delivered a PowerPoint presentation on the new election rules at the Service Employees International Union's (SEIU) New York City headquarters yesterday. The training was conducted by three regional directors at the "Offices of 32BJ SEIU," according to a notice posted on the NLRB website.

Training at the SEIU office has also aroused some suspicion, as the agency's relationship to the union has caused controversy in recent years. In September 2014, a federal judge in Pennsylvania declared that the NLRB was acting more like a union subsidiary than a labor watchdog as it investigated a Pittsburgh hospital.

Critics of the new rule say that the rules will tilt the scales of the election process in favor of unions. While unions can spend months and even years wooing workers to organize a union, employer campaigns take place after the election petition has been filed. Decreasing that timeframe reduces employee access to balanced information about the potential impact of unionization.