NLRB BECOMES TEST BAROMETER FOR WHITE HOUSE AND DEMOCRATS

Washington, D.C.-- Some of the same business groups President Barack Obama is courting with his regulatory review and support for a corporate-tax overhaul said on January 27 they would fight his renomination of a former labor guy named Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Becker was once an attorney at the AFL-CIO and SEIU.

President Obama put Mr. Becker on the NLRB in March of 2010 using a recess appointment after his nomination failed to get 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican-led Senate filibuster last February. That appointment expires at the end of this year. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama nominated him again to a term that would expire in December 2014.

Labor unions in general applauded the move, calling Mr. Becker a "highly respected and qualified" candidate who will back workers rights. Business groups however, which consider Mr. Becker "too sympathetic to labor" are fuming over the announcement.

Predictably, Obama is facing stiff opposition from the the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the uber-creepy and notoriously anti-labor partisan group called the Workforce Fairness Institute.  Why credible news agencies cite their opinion on matters of public trust in the first place is beyond our comprehension.

Craig Becker

In a nutshell, the battle over Mr. Becker has become a proxy for the debate concerning the future role of unions in our economy. It's no secret that labor unions are struggling to reverse declining membership. And, the AFL-CIO and labor advocates indicate they see the nomination as a step in the right direction. Unions have been making the case that workers need stronger protections and should have the ability and the right to organize workers who want to join a union. This comes on the heels of eight long disasterous years of the Bush adminstration where the GOP dominated board lost most of it's credibility with the American public.

In 2011, Republicans will again have a chance to reject politics as usual and put the needs of American working families over their own political interests-- but don't hold your breath.  We at the CSEA Voice Reporter don't see that happening anytime soon.  Expect an ugly and long protracted fight over "who controls what" on the NLRB. 

However, in the past two years, the NLRB's majority recently outvoted the board's Republicans to take on several cases that revisit disputes over when a union's representation can be challenged. One case questions whether, after the sale of a unionized company, the new owner, a rival union or the employees may challenge the incumbent union's right to represent the workers.

The board also split in late October along partisan lines when it decided to begin reconsidering whether the United Auto Workers should be able to organize graduate students who are teachers at New York University. A ruling by the Bush-era labor board had found that graduate students weren't considered employees as defined by labor law and weren't eligible to join a union.

The fight to get Becker on this board is a test barometer for whether this White House and the Democrats really care about the rights of average working people. Stay tuned the Voice Reporter for further details on the Becker nomination.

These developments come after the National Labor Relations Board has threatened to sue the states of Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah over recently passed state constitutional amendments that require secret-ballot elections before a company can be unionized (see earlier post).

The board says the states can't override federal law that gives workers the option of the so-called card-check method of organizing, which unions favor but many employers oppose.