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EDITORIAL: Labor nominee
A
radical choice for the NLRB
Feb. 10, 2010
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Card check legislation remains the Holy Grail for
Big Labor. With union membership in a free fall
outside the public sector, labor organizations want
to rig the game by making it more difficult to
defeat organizing efforts.
But the card check proposal -- which would all but
eliminate secret ballot elections in union
organizing campaigns in favor of an employee
"check-off" procedure -- doesn't have enough votes
to get through Congress.
The next best thing? Pack the five-member National
Labor Relations Board with those sympathetic to the
organized labor agenda, winning administratively
what can't be achieved legislatively.
That's why Democrats and their union benefactors
have pushed for more than a year to get Craig Becker
a seat on the NLRB. Mr. Becker has been an associate
general counsel for the Service Employees
International Union since 1990, and he was
previously counsel for the AFL-CIO. It's no secret
where his sympathies reside when it comes to card
check.
For instance, the Society for Human Resource
Management notes that the National Association of
Manufacturers found a 1993 law review article by Mr.
Becker in which he suggests "employees should be
compelled to join unions and that employers should
not be allowed to restrain union elections." Mr.
Becker has also written that unions are necessary to
"escape the evils of individualism and individual
competition and contract."
Workers of the world, unite!
Last Thursday, a Senate committee sent Mr. Becker's
nomination to the floor on a 13-10 party line vote.
But on Tuesday, Senate Democrats failed to muster
the 60 votes necessary to move Mr. Becker's
nomination forward.
Democrats are upset. But it's worth noting that the
board has operated with only two members for the
past two years, in part because organized labor
succeeded -- through Senate Democrats -- in blocking
George W. Bush's nominees to fill the vacancies.
What goes around ...
And so hostile is Mr. Becker to business interests
that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- for the first
time in 17 years -- actively opposed his nomination.
"The NLRB has the ability to unduly increase union
power and leverage without intervention by
Congress," said Randel K. Johnson, the chamber's
vice president for labor, immigration, and employee
benefits. "Confirming (Mr.) Becker will tilt the
balance in labor law dramatically in favor of union
special interests."
Presidents deserve wide latitude in filling
executive branch positions. But given his far-left
philosophical leanings, the possibility that Mr.
Becker might use the post to help organized labor
impose its agenda through the back door -- without
congressional consent -- was a real concern.
Senate Republicans did the right thing in keeping
Mr. Becker off the National Labor Relations Board. |
