Union Hack Richard Griffin Closer to NLRB General Counsel Job

President Obama’s controversial nomination of Richard Griffin, Jr. for general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board was voted out of committee without a hearing, and the full Senate will vote on Griffin without a meaningful debate. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) set a cloture vote limiting debate for October 28. The Senate’s Democratic leadership has shown again that it is willing to dispense with a necessary element of the democratic process to serve the interests of Big Labor.

The general counsel’s spot at the NLRB is unusually powerful. Unlike general counsels at most other federal agencies, the NLRB general counsel has independent, unreviewable prosecutorial discretion. He alone determines whether to issue a complaint alleging violations of the National Labor Relations Act, and in the process he selects new issues for the Board to decide. In the wrong hands, this power can be used to spearhead a partisan pro-union agenda.

Big Labor wants Griffin at the NLRB as much as it wanted Craig Becker, who came to the Board, like Griffin, after decades of loyal service in the labor movement—Becker from the AFL-CIO, and Griffin from the International Union of Operating Engineers. Becker, who was recessed to the Board after his nomination was successfully filibustered in a lopsided Senate vote, did not disappoint Big Labor. He became the architect of some of the Obama Board’s most controversial decisions. Nor will Griffin disappoint them.