Teamsters Argue Against Obama Recess Appointment Fight

When President Obama appointed members to the National Labor Relations Board when Congress was in session, he violated the Constitution and the National Right to Work Legal Foundation went right to work.  We filed a lawsuit in federal court and from the initial oral arguments, things went well.  Interesting, we have a new ally in the fight — an Oklahoma local of the Teamsters union:

An Oklahoma local of the Teamsters Union is disputing recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), charging that recess appointments were made while the U.S. Senate was not in recess, according to legal documents obtained by The Daily Caller.

“The union disputes that the board is properly and sufficiently constituted, as ‘recess’ appointments (to NLRB) were made when there was no recess,” according to a Dec. 12, 2012 affidavit signed by Teamsters Local 523 President Gary Ketchum.

“As far as I know, that was something that was decided to be accurate,” Ketchum told The Daily Caller, referring to the improper recess appointments.

A “recess appointment” refers to the president’s appointment of a senior federal official made while the U.S. Senate is in recess.

But the labor leader does not believe President Barrack Obama was responsible for the disputed appointments.

“It happened before President Obama, from my understanding,” Ketchum told TheDC. “It would have had to have been the second Bush.” Ketchum declined to elaborate further.

Seven of former President George W. Bush’s nine NLRB appointees were recess-appointed, but no reports have yet demonstrated that Bush made any improper recess appointments.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit declined Wednesday to rule on whether Obama had the authority to make three recess appointments to the NLRB in January 2012, when the Senate was not officially in recess.