Thursday, February 4, 2010

Why You Should Know About Craig Becker (and Why You Need to Be Worried)

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Craig Becker is President Obama’s nominee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

As the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Associate General Counsel, Becker has regularly advocated for inappropriate use of the NLRB’s power. In an instant of uncensored honesty, Mr. Becker wrote that employers should be barred from NLRB proceedings:


“On these latter issues employers should have no right to be heard in either a representation case or an unfair labor practice case, even though Board rulings might indirectly affect their duty to bargain.”

In Becker’s opinion, business owners, many of whom are small business owners that collectively employee 50 million Americans, have “no legally cognizable interest” in one of the most significant decisions impacting the potential future success of their company. But Becker takes his views one step further and would even deny employers the ability to alert authorities to illegal union activity during an election campaign saying:

“Similarly, employers should have no right to raise questions concerning voter eligibility or campaign conduct. Because employers have no right to vote, they cast no ballots the significance of which can be diluted by the inclusion of ineligible employees. … Because employers lack the formal status either of candidates vying to represent employees or voters, they should not be entitled to charge that unions disobeyed the rules governing voter eligibility or campaign conduct. On the questions of unit determination, voter eligibility, and campaign conduct, only the employee constituency and their potential union representatives should be heard.”

To suggest that employers should have no role in the unionization process, as Mr. Becker does, is a point of view that is outside of the mainstream and one that puts him at odds with the current practices of the NLRB...

[I.e., yet another extremely inappropriate appointment. Appointments are policy. ]

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