Obama Removes Craig Becker FRom NLRB

FROM: THE DAILY CALLER

On Thursday President Barack Obama officially rescinded former Service Employees International Union and AFL-CIO attorney Craig Becker’s nomination to serve on the National Labor Relations Board. The move shapes up as the latest in a growing line of Republican victories surrounding the board.

The NLRB is the federal agency that until recently opposed the Boeing Company’s move to opening a new assembly plant in the right-to-work state of South Carolina.

The board has since dropped its complaint against the aircraft manufacturer, but for months parroted union allegations that Boeing’s South Carolina production line was the product of retaliation against International Association of Machinists workers in the state of Washington.

While serving as a March 2010 recess appointee to the board, Becker has faced criticism for being too radical. The NLRB has made several moves since then that broke new ground in the degree to which they favored union positions — including moves to shorten the time-frame for workplace unionization elections, force employers to display pro-union posters in workplaces, and allow unions to section off workplaces in order to unionize them slowly in smaller “micro-unions.”

When news broke that Becker’s nomination had been rescinded, Fred Wszolek of the Workforce Fairness Institute had harsh words. “Good riddance,” Wszolek said. “Craig Becker will not be missed.”

House Education and Workforce committee chairman Rep. John Kline, a Minnesota Republican, told The Daily Caller that Becker’s absence will be a net positive for America. “A victory on behalf of America’s workers and employers,” Kline said in an email.

Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi, the ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, asked President Obama ten months ago to rescind Becker’s nomination.

“I oppose the nomination of Craig Becker absolutely,” Enzi said in a February 2011 statement. “Over the past ten months, Mr. Becker has made his intention and bias clear. The NLRB is meant to be an impartial authority ensuring organizing freedom in the workplace, not a politicized institution bent on increasing unionization rates at the cost of American jobs. Last year, Mr. Becker was appointed against the will of the Senate. This year, I urge President Obama to work with Senators to identify a replacement nominee.”

U.S. Chamber of Commerce labor policy specialist Glenn Spencer told TheDC that, like Enzi, most senators easily comprehended the message that Becker’s 2009 nomination sent to American businesses.

“Using government as an agent of union activism was never a strategy for economic growth,” Spencer said, “and Becker’s failure to win confirmation shows that a majority of Senators understood that.”

In May TheDC uncovered a group of Harvard Law Review articles in which Becker advocated for government control over the flow of capital.

Reacting to those articles at the time, Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson told TheDC that Becker’s interpretation held that “labor unions can’t possibly succeed unless you guarantee their success.

In his reading of the law, any notion of workers who choose to collectively bargain sitting down with their employer and working out a deal is gone.”

A spokeswoman for the NLRB has not responded to a request from The Daily Caller about President Obama’latest move.

The New NLRB: Boeing Is Just the Beginning

The New NLRB: Deciding what state you can open a business.

From: National Review Online

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) raised a lot of eyebrows by filing a complaint against Boeing for opening a new plant in a right-to-work state. But that action is just the beginning of the board’s aggressive new pro-union agenda. An internal NLRB memorandum, dated May 10, shows that the board wants to give unions much greater power over employers and their investment and management decisions.

Under current NLRB rules, companies can make major business decisions (like relocating a plant) without negotiating with their union — as long as those changes are not primarily made to reduce labor costs. For example, a business can unilaterally merge several smaller operations into one larger facility to achieve administrative efficiencies. Companies only have to negotiate working conditions, not their business plans.

The NLRB apparently intends to change that. In the internal memorandum, the board’s associate general counsel, Richard Siegel, asks the NLRB’s regional directors to flag such business-relocation cases. Siegel explains that the Board is considering “whether to propose a new standard” in these situations because the chairman of the NLRB, Wilma Liebman, has expressed her desire to “revisit existing law in this area” by modifying the rule established in a case called Dubuque Packing.

Apparently, Liebman did not like having to apply the Dubuque Packing rules in a recent case involving the Embarq Corporation and the AFL-CIO. The NLRB decided that under the Dubuque Packing rules, Embarq did not violate the National Labor Relations Act by refusing to bargain with the union over its decision to close its call center in Las Vegas (a right-to-work state) and relocate that work to its call center in Florida (also a right-to-work state).

The Persecution of Boeing

From: National Review Online

H. L. Mencken defined puritanism as the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy. The National Labor Relations Board is haunted by the fear that a company somewhere might be creating jobs with a nonunionized work force.

Boeing has run afoul of that fear by investing more than $1 billion in a new plant in the right-to-work state of South Carolina. With only the flimsiest legal justification, the board wants to force Boeing to reverse course and locate the facility with its current operations in Washington State, where its workers are unionized.

The NLRB’s claims are laughable on their face, although Boeing — trying to run a business in a highly competitive global market — can be forgiven for missing the joke. The board accuses Boeing of “interfering with, restraining, and coercing” its union employees in the exercise of their rights by making a thoroughly understandable business decision.

This is putting not a thumb, but a fist on the scale in favor of the unions. A writer at the liberal The New Republic says it “may be the most radical thing the Obama administration has done.” It’s an attempt to keep companies with the misfortune of operating in union-heavy states in perpetual thrall to organized labor.

The CEO of Boeing stands accused of saying the company could ill afford the “strikes happening every three to four years in Puget Sound.” In a memo, paraphrased in the NLRB complaint, Boeing management said it wanted “to reduce vulnerability to delivery disruptions caused by work stoppages.” What’s notable about these statements is that they are so obvious, they should go without saying.

Boeing and the Radical NLRB

From: The Daily Caller

Several Republican senators penned an open letter to President Barack Obama on Thursday calling on him to immediately rescind National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) nominations for Lafe Solomon and former Service Employees International Union (SEIU) general counsel Craig Becker. Their request comes as the NLRB is leading a charge against Boeing for planning to open a non-union factory in South Carolina.

Republican South Carolina Sens. Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, along with the other Republican senators who signed the letter, believe Becker and Solomon seek to support labor union bosses at the expense of workers. “The NLRB, at the behest of Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon, has taken unprecedented legal action against The Boeing Company to prevent it from expanding productions into South Carolina, a state that assures workers the freedom not to join a union as a condition of employment,” the letter reads. “We consider this an attack on millions of workers in 22 right-to-work states, as well as a government-led act of intimidation against American companies that should have the freedom to choose to build plants in right-to-work states. If the NLRB prevails, it will only encourage companies to make their investments in foreign nations, moving jobs and economic growth overseas.”

Becker and Solomon were both recess-appointed to the NLRB and, in Becker’s case, all 41 Republican senators wrote Obama to urge him not to make Becker’s recess appointment after the Senate rejected his nomination the first time around. Solomon has not yet appeared before the Senate for confirmation.

NLRB continues its crusade to unionize America

From: American Thinker

Fresh off its decision to ask an administrative law judge to stop Boeing's move to step up production in South Carolina because Boeing cited its wish to lower the risk of suffering more strikes, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is stepping up its game.

Now Obama's NLRB is planning on suing two states, Arizona and South Dakota, seeking to invalidate those states' constitutional amendments that prohibit card check. This is just the latest step in Obama's campaign to reward and empower unions (and their campaign piggy banks) at the expense of jobs and growth (see "Unions Still in the Driver's Seat" for a partial list)
The New York Times reports:

The Arizona and South Dakota constitutional amendments were promoted by various conservative groups worried that Congressional Democrats would pass legislation allowing unions to insist on using card check in organizing drives, meaning that an employer would have to recognize a union as soon as a majority of workers signed pro-union cards. Under current law, private sector employers can insist that secret ballots be used when unions are trying to organize.

Unions like card check because the public voting allows them to see who supports unionizing and who does not. This transparency pressures workers to support union drives since their opinions will be public.