Obama's middle finger

[GS78]

Craig Becker has a new job. Head of the Labor Relations board. He is highly qualified too, having done extensive work with ACORN, SEIU and Obama in the past. Disregarding the Senate’s constitutional responsibility of advice and consent, the unwise Obama has played another trump card. .... although Presidents have made recess appointments before Obama to be sure, Obama has used the tactic to thwart the will of Congress so soon after a bi-partisan vote against this particular nominee is disturbing at best, revealing at least.

Becker is a Chicago-based associate general counsel for the Service Employees International Union (S.E.I.U., [the biggest beneficiary of Obamas healthcare takeover]) and the AFL-CIO who would join a federal agency that mediates disputes between companies and employees and certifies union elections. Becker’s views have been an issue for business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because he has the potential to shape labor laws through rulings on the board.

Becker would “undermine the board and show cynicism in the labor management community,” Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said during formal debate before the vote. Becker is “the first person nominated” for the board “who comes directly from a labor organization.”

Democrats, who control votes in the Senate by a 59-41 majority, needed 60 to move the nomination forward. The cloture vote was 52-33





After all, who needs legislation when an ideologically pro-union recess appointee like Becker can change the nation’s labor laws without public scrutiny or congressional review? As Becker notes, labor “reforms” that failed to pass Congress, such as EFCA, can “be achieved with almost no alteration of the statutory framework” (and all the messy debate and public scrutiny that comes with it) by NLRB rulemaking and case-by-case decisions.

A review of his writings, especially his article, “Democracy in the Workplace: Union Representation Elections and Federal Labor Law,” reveals that, if appointed to the NLRB, Becker would change America’s labor laws in ways that even the most labor-friendly legislator could only dream of. For instance, think EFCA’s elimination of the secret ballot via “card check” would hurt employees? Becker doesn’t. In fact, he would extend EFCA’s philosophical foundations to an eye-popping extreme: Becker doesn’t only support “automatic certification by ‘non-electoral means’ (e.g. card check) or eliminating the option of ‘no union’ from the ballot—he would leave employers with “no role in union organizing campaigns and in union representation elections



http://blog.heritage.org/2010/03/26/cra ... -big-ally/