If I remember correctly Obama put a Labor Relations Union attorney in charge of the NLRB...I will look it up. Fox in charge of Hen House!
Yep, here it is...
Mar 29 2010 2:46pm EDT
Obama's NLRB Appointment Puts Business on 'Red Alert'
That didn’t take long. A day after Congress left town for two weeks, President Barack Obama on Saturday used his power to appoint people to government posts while Congress is on recess to put Craig Becker on the National Labor Relations Board.
Business groups lobbied hard against Becker’s nomination to the NLRB when his nomination failed to clear the Senate in February. They contend he is radically pro-union and will try to accomplish administratively what unions have failed to achieve legislatively: Change the rules to make it easier to organize workplaces. All 41 Republican senators sent the president a letter last Thursday asking him not to use his recess appointment power to install Becker at the agency.
Flush from his victory on health care reform, however, Obama felt no need to listen to the business community or Republicans concerning Becker. Instead, he rewarded his friends in organized labor by not only appointing Becker, but also another Democratic union lawyer, Mark Pearce, to the NLRB. The Republican nominee for the NLRB, Brian Hayes, didn’t get a recess appointment.
Becker and Pearce were among 15 officials that Obama appointed on an interim basis on Saturday. The 15 have been awaiting Senate action on their nominations for seven months on average, the White House noted, but have been blocked by Republicans.
“I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government,” Obama said.
Becker is associate general counsel to the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO. He’s also a law professor who has written in favor of restricting the rights of employers in labor disputes.
Randy Johnson, a senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said Becker’s “prolific writings…suggest a radical view of labor law that flies in the face of established precedent and case law, and is far outside the mainstream.”
“The business community should be on red alert for radical changes that could significantly impair the ability of America’s job creators to compete,” Johnson said.
Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican, said Obama’s decision to appoint two Democrats to the NLRB while “leaving a Republican nominee on the sidelines proves this was not about ensuring workers and employers have access to a fully functioning board. Rather it is simply the latest special-interest giveaway in Washington’s culture of union favoritism.”
Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, said Becker’s appointment threw “fuel on the fire” of partisan rancor in Washington “at a time when the debate about politics is a very angry debate to begin with.”
Unions, of course, were pleased with Becker’s appointment.
Both Becker and Pearce are “evenhanded voices for the country’s working men and women, fighting for their right to organize and demand fair treatment,” said a statement issued by the Laborers’ International Union of North America.
“Filling these seats on the NLRB is critical to the thousands of cases of hardworking Americans who play by the rules and deserve justice and resolution to disputes on their job,” said Chris Chafe, executive director of the Change to Win union federation.
Kimberly Freeman Brown, executive director of American Rights at Work, said the appointments are “a very good start” on the Obama administration’s efforts “to advance the cause of labor-law reform.”
That’s just what business groups fear. They’ve been successful so far in stopping the Senate from passing the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow unions to organize workplaces simply by getting a majority of workers to sign cards saying they wish to be represented by a union. With Becker at the NLRB, however—and Obama showing no desire to accommodate businesses on labor issues—they’re anxious about what’s coming down the pike.
It could be a good time to be a worker—if you can get a job.
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