New NLRB Made to Order For Big Labor

New NLRB Made to Order For Big Labor

'Recess' Appointee: Workers Shouldn't Be Allowed to Reject Unions (Source: April 2010 NRTWC Newsletter) On February 9, union lawyer Craig Becker, nominated by President Obama to fill one of three vacancies on the powerful National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), turned out to be too radical even for a number of normally pro-Big Labor U.S. senators. Because of several union-label senators' defections, union lobbyists and the White House fell eight Senate votes short that day of the 60 they needed to cut off Right to Work debate and bring the Becker nomination up for final consideration. This vote was a significant victory for National Right to Work Committee members and supporters, who had led the fight against Mr. Becker since his selection was first announced last spring, and their allies. However, top union bosses were furious that, because of well-mobilized Right to Work opposition, Big Labor Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had failed to ram through the Becker nomination. Almost immediately, Richard Trumka, chief of the AFL-CIO union conglomerate, publicly demanded that the President circumvent the Senate and install Craig Becker on the NLRB temporarily through a "recess" appointment. Other union bigwigs like Andy Stern, czar of the massive Service Employees International Union (SEIU), were also cheerleading for Mr. Becker. For years, Mr. Becker has served as counsel for both the SEIU union and the AFL-CIO. Craig Becker: Union Monopoly Should Be Mandated, Even if Most Workers Don't Want It And on Saturday, March 27, President Obama did the bidding of the union hierarchy by recess appointing Mr. Becker, along with the other union lawyer he has nominated to the NLRB, New Yorker Mark Pearce.
IOU’s Called In -- Payback Appointment

IOU’s Called In -- Payback Appointment

The Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal discuss the possibility of a recess appointment of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.  A recess appointment would bypass the will of the Senate and install a self-proclaimed forced unionism radical to the Board.  The Washington Times correctly opines:   Mark Mix of the National Right to Work organization reports that in 2007 alone, Mr. Becker's lawyering forced 63,000 California workers to pay union dues even after rejecting union membership. He allowed repeated "home visits" for union backers, designed to pressure workers to sign public union-organizing petitions. Unions were "formed to escape the evils of individualism and individual competition. ... Their actions necessarily involve coercion," Mr. Becker once explained. This gets to the heart of the fears about this nomination. The administration so far has been unable to push through Congress the radical plan to force union organizing through "card check" mechanisms in which workers would be denied a secret ballot when voting on whether to unionize. The purpose, clearly, is to invite coercion and intimidation to increase the ranks of dues-paying members. Mr. Becker let slip his suggested solution to the congressional difficulty back in 1993, when he said the NLRB could impose card check, or something close to it, with "no alteration of the statutory framework." Indeed, he openly called for "abandoning the union election."