This week’s news that the AFL-CIO has named Craig Becker, the former SEIU attorney who Obama appointed to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), as its new co-general counsel is a reminder that Senator Orrin Hatch was right to grill Becker when President Obama nominated him to serve on the NLRB and that Hatch’s Senate colleagues were right to reject his nomination.
Becker is the operative who said he thought employers didn’t have a role in discussing the costs and benefits of joining a union, even though lower wages for new employees, restrictive work rules that limit skill-building, impediments to career advancement and a less secure retirement may all come with a union card.
Becker is the operative who was on the Obama transition team to install Big Labor allies throughout the government before he was the operative who was himself installed by “recess appointment” (read: against the will of the Senate) to the NLRB.
At the NLRB, Becker is the operative who advanced a radical agenda that would allow paid union organizers to trample businesses’ property rights and strip employees of the right to a secret ballot if the union and company had cut a secret deal, allowing the creation of swarms of “micro unions” to cherry pick a few employees at a time to bypass the will of the entire proper bargaining unit and reduce the amount of information employees would have when suddenly faced with a one-sided union sales pitch and election for dues-paying membership.
Now, Becker is the operative who’s back to taking a direct union paycheck as the co-general counsel of the AFL-CIO. (Brief aside: If Becker is making more now than he did before he quit his Big Labor job to work for Obama, wouldn’t that indicate he’s being rewarded for work done at the NLRB?)
It’s worth remembering that three of the five current members of the NLRB were illegally installed there by Obama to continue Becker’s reign of error — and it’s equally worth remembering that the only way to stop a government from bullying others during recess is to get a new class president.
Brett McMahon is the president of Miller and Long DC and a spokesman for the Halt the Assault campaign.