Politicians Pledging to Back Right to Work Take Charge of House

Thanks in significant part to the efforts of National Right to Work Committee members across the country, starting this month the U.S. House of Representatives will be led by a speaker and a majority leader who have pledged full support for Americans’ Right to Work without being forced to join or pay dues to a union.

Now Committee members’ job is to make sure Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), and other members of Congress turn their pro-Right to Work promises into action.

John Boehner, Eric Cantor Owe Leadership Posts to Worker-Freedom Advocates

Mr. Boehner and Mr. Cantor enjoy their top leadership positions in the House in part due to pro-Right to Work Americans’ support for congressional candidates nationwide who had pledged to oppose compulsory unionism.

Millions of pro-Right to Work Americans mobilized against candidates who supported compulsory unionism, or tried to hide their position on freedom in the workplace. These Americans expect Mr. Boehner and Mr. Cantor to lay the foundation for a new federal labor policy respecting each employee’s ability to decide for himself or herself whether or not to join or financially support a union, declared Committee President Mark Mix.

“Poll after poll shows nearly four out of five Americans who regularly vote support the Right to Work,” explained Mr. Mix.

“When these citizens helped John Boehner and Eric Cantor become the new House leaders, they sent an unmistakable message to Capitol Hill — roll back Organized Labor’s compulsory-unionism privileges.”

In the 2010 elections, voters firmly rejected major Big Labor power grabs such as the “card check” forced-unionism bill, which sailed through the House as recently as 2007 and seemed close to becoming law in early 2009, after Barack Obama became the 44th U.S. President.

Momentum Swings Toward Right to Work

A full-fledged Committee effort to get federal candidates on the record against the “card check” bill, or “Employee Free Choice Act,” as proponents cynically mislabeled it, surpassed expectations in mobilizing citizens and increasing the number of Right to Work supporters in Congress.

To activate Right to Work supporters, the Committee distributed a record-smashing total of nearly 8.4 million federal candidate Survey 2010 “information packets” through the U.S. Postal Service last year. Above and beyond that, the 2010 program had a massive Internet component, including nearly half a million e-mails transmitted in October alone. All this plus radio, TV, and newspaper advertising.

Lobbying by Committee members persuaded hundreds of House and Senate candidates to take a pro-Right to Work position, which in turn helped many get elected. That’s not surprising, given the Right to Work principle’s overwhelming public support.

“The political momentum is now against compulsory unionism,” commented Mr. Mix.

“That means in this Congress the Committee actually has a chance, if members keep up the pressure, to pick up enough votes from the ‘mushy middle’ to push pro-Right to Work legislation through the House.”

Committee Pushes For Floor Votes

“Instead of just fending off repeated Big Labor attempts to wipe out the meager protections for workers’ freedom as individuals in current federal labor law, Right to Work advocates are ready to go on the offensive in Congress,” Mr. Mix continued.

“This year, it won’t be enough for self-avowed Right to Work allies on Capitol Hill to oppose union-boss legislation. Pro-Right to Work Americans want the politicians they supported to help them regain the freedoms Congress has previously abrogated.”

According to Mr. Mix, Committee supporters will know the new House leaders are truly committed to fulfilling the pledges they, along with many other House candidates, made if they ensure hearings and floor votes on legislation such as:

The National Right to Work Act, which would restore millions of employees’ freedom to hold a job without being forced to pay union dues by repealing compulsory-unionism authorizations in federal law. (For more information, see page four.)

The Rewarding Achievement and Incentivizing Successful Employees (RAISE) Act, which would reform federal labor law by narrowing the scope of union bosses’ monopoly-bargaining privileges. Specifically, the RAISE Act would allow unionized employers to pay individual employees more than a union contract calls for without having to get union bosses’ permission first.

Mr. Boehner Will Need To Hear From Right to Work Supporters

While freedom-loving Americans are hopeful that Speaker Boehner will make good on his 2010 campaign pledges to defend the Right to Work, history indicates pressure from Committee members may well be necessary to keep him on the correct course.

One notable example Mr. Mix recalled was then-Minority Leader Boehner’s decision in the summer of 2007 to give Big Labor Democrats a de facto free pass on legislation federalizing government union bosses’ monopoly-bargaining privileges over state and local public-safety officers.

“When union lobbyists rammed the so-called ‘Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation’ Act through the House in July 2007, the GOP House leadership team failed even to send out an e-mail urging caucus members to oppose the scheme until an hour before the floor vote,” Mr. Mix pointed out.

“Since the House was in session when the last-minute e-mail was finally transmitted, many of Mr. Boehner’s caucus members likely did not even know their leaders were opposed to the public-safety union power grab until after it had already been rubber-stamped by the chamber.

“Fortunately, thanks to Committee members’ determined efforts, this destructive legislation never became law. [See page eight for more information.] Nevertheless, this incident reminds us that Right to Work mobilization is always necessary, regardless of who holds the congressional reins.

“That’s why we will need to watch closely to see if Speaker Boehner allows the Right to Work Bill and the RAISE Act to get fair consideration. I’m confident Committee members will be willing and able to let Mr. Boehner know they want action on these bills.”

Tough Battles Ahead For Right to Work Committee And Its Members

The substantial Right to Work gains in the 2010 elections are encouraging, but freedom-loving citizens must keep their eyes wide open, Mr. Mix cautioned.

“Previous U.S. House speakers like Newt Gingrich [R-Ga.] and Dennis Hastert [R-Ill.] also made campaign pledges to defend the Right to Work, but avoided confrontations with Big Labor once Congress was in session,” he noted.

“However, despite all the pitfalls ahead, if Committee members and supporters remain mobilized, the 112th Congress could be a historic turning point in favor of Right to Work.”

Mr. Mix urged Committee members to call their U.S. representatives at 202-225-3121 (or my e-mail through the Committee’s Website) and urge them to support pro-Right to Work legislation every chance they get. Just ask for your representative by name.

As Big Labor has realized it won’t get “card check” legislation through Congress, it is turning to its secret weapon inside the Obama Administration—labor lawyer Craig Becker. And as many Senators feared when he was nominated, Mr. Becker is using his position on the National Labor Relations Board to bypass the will of Congress.

President Obama gave Mr. Becker a recess appointment in March after Senate Democratsrefused to confirm him to the NLRB, the agency charged with fairly overseeing union elections. As a top lawyer for the Service Employees International Union, Mr. Becker had suggested that the NLRB has the legal authority to impose card check—which eliminates secret ballots in union elections—without the approval of Congress. And lo, at the end of August the NLRB dropped the bombshell, when, in a 3-2 decision, it decided to revisit its important 2007 Dana Corp. ruling.

Card check is a top labor priority because it allows a workplace to be organized if 50% of workers at the site sign a union card. Without a national law, unions have tried to persuade individual businesses to allow card check rather than secret ballots, and some have gone along.

When a workplace is organized after a secret ballot, workers are barred from a vote to “decertify” the union until after the first negotiated contract expires. In its Dana decision, however, the NLRB recognized that card check was an inferior substitute to secret ballots. It therefore held that when a company recognized a union via card check, workers had the right to force an immediate secret vote on whether they really wanted to join that union.

The Dana ruling is about protecting workers from union harassment. And if card check is as popular as unions claim, labor leaders should have no problem letting workers vote to ratify or reject a card-check process. As NLRB member Peter Schaumber, a Bush appointee, noted in his dissent to the NLRB decision to revisit the case, the Dana ruling has in no way chilled the current card-check process. [click to read more at the Wall Street Journal]

If Republicans win the House or Senate, big labor will call in their final chit and demand passage of the Card Check Forced Unionism bill and Boss Trumka isn’t denying it:

On the C-SPAN “Newsmakers” show he was asked whether the Employee Free Choice Act will be considered in Congress this year.Trumka said: “I think you’ll see the Employee Free Choice Act come up again. I think you’ll see it probably before the end of the year.  Before the elections or in a lameduck session? Trumka: “Either one.”

(Source: July 2010 NRTWC Newsletter)

Since the beginning of 2009, Big Labor has had a cheerleader in the Oval Office. At the same time, ample majorities of both chambers of the U.S. Congress have been willing to vote for virtually any power grab sought by union officials, as long as they could do so without running into intense, across-the-board constituent opposition.

Consequently, top union bosses have expected to see enacted in the current Congress legislation that would help them sharply increase the share of all private-sector workers who are under union monopoly-bargaining control.

Their original vehicle for achieving this objective was S.560/H.R.1409, the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act.”

Sponsored by union-label Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Congressman George Miller (D-Calif.), S.560/H.R.1409 would grease the skids for Big Labor workplace takeovers in several ways. Most famously, it would effectively end secret-ballot elections in union organizing drives, replacing them with so-called “card checks.”

That means, if S.560/H.R.1409 became law, union organizers would have far more opportunities than they currently do to intimidate individual workers into signing not just themselves, but all of their nonunion fellow employees, over to Big Labor control.

Unfortunately for union bigwigs, the National Right to Work Committee and its allies have mobilized massive public opposition to the measure, greatly lowering its prospects for passage in its current form.

New NLRB Made to Order For Union Hierarchy

In response, for many months now Big Labor lobbyists and union strategists have tried to concoct new, passable legislation that would accomplish the same objective through somewhat different means. But “Plan B” has been slow to emerge.

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

And now, the Obama Administration appears to be considering another, quicker and easier way of intensifying workplace elections’ bias in favor union organizers. And this method has the advantage, from Big Labor’s perspective, of not requiring any direct congressional involvement.

The powerful National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which regulates the labor-management relations of businesses employing well over 90% of America’s private-sector employees, will soon be manned entirely by bureaucrats appointed or reappointed by pro-forced unionism President Barack Obama.

As this month’s Newsletter goes to press, four of the five NLRB members are already Obama appointees or reappointees. And three of these four are veteran union lawyers.

Wilma Liebman, originally appointed to the Board by union-label President Bill Clinton and elevated to the chairmanship early last year by Mr. Obama, is an ex-lawyer for the notorious Teamster union.

Obama appointee Mark Pearce was, until this year, a career union lawyer in private practice in Buffalo, N.Y.

Craig Becker, who for years served as counsel for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO, has been Mr. Obama’s most controversial appointee yet.

While Mr. Becker, Mr. Pierce, and Ms. Liebman will very likely almost always agree on the main issues in NLRB cases, Mr. Becker differs from the other two in having a long “paper trail” that from the time of his nomination made it plain to see just how radical he is.

Craig Becker: Union Monopoly Should Be Mandated, Even if Most Workers Don’t Want It

National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix commented:

“Over the years, Craig Becker has publicly acknowledged believing that any employee or employer efforts to resist the unionization of a workplace are unacceptable.

“For example, in one ‘labor studies’ journal article, Mr. Becker dismissed the notion that workers should have any say whatsoever, whether as individuals or collectively by secret ballot or ‘card check,’ over whether or not they are unionized.

“Federal policy should not acknowledge employees’ ‘choice to remain unrepresented,’ contended Mr. Becker.

“Their only choice, he explained, should be over which set of union officials get ‘exclusive’ power to negotiate their wages, benefits and work rules.

“Mr. Becker’s publicly aired views are so extreme that even several normally pro-forced unionism senators refused to approve his nomination. For that reason, he has yet to be confirmed. He nevertheless sits on the NLRB today because, on March 27, President Obama bypassed the Senate and ‘recess’ appointed him.

“It’s likely Mr. Becker will take every opportunity to curtail employees’ freedom to oppose unionization of their workplace.

“Ms. Liebman, Mr. Pierce, and he are all expected to vote in lock-step to increase Big Labor’s monopoly-bargaining and forced-dues powers over the individual employee whenever they get the chance.

“And barely more than two months after President Obama did the union bosses’ bidding by personally installing Mr. Becker, the Board signaled how it might bureaucratically proceed to provide Big Labor with tools of intimidation very similar to those the ‘card check’ bill would have furnished.”

On June 9, the NLRB put out a request for information about “electronic voting services for both remote and on-site elections.”

The request has been widely interpreted as a step toward mandating the routine use of remote Internet or telephone balloting in union organizing campaigns.

Remote Voting Facilitates ‘Vote Selling and Coercion’

Under current law, when a unionization election occurs, employees normally cast their votes in private ballot booths, except when circumstances make the use of ballot booths very difficult or impossible.

If the Obama NLRB dispenses with ballot booths, and instead makes it the norm for workers to cast their votes over unionization from, say, their home computers, that will greatly intensify the process’s bias in favor of union organizers.

“Federal labor policy already authorizes professional union organizers to target individual workers by visiting them at their homes, a privilege of which they regularly take advantage,” Mr. Mix pointed out.

“Forcing employees to vote at home would greatly exacerbate the abuses that already occur during such ‘home visits.’ Union organizers would visit workers’ homes to ‘make sure’ they had voted electronically, and even offer to ‘help’ them cast their votes.

“The NLRB request purports to focus solely on ‘secure’ electronic voting from remote locations, but, as Ms. [Wilma] Liebman, Mr. [Mark] Pierce, and Mr. Becker must surely know, that’s a practical impossibility.

“Remote Internet voting, as a report sponsored by the National Science Foundation and published by the Internet Policy Institute concluded a few years ago, ‘can be observed [by outsiders], opening the door to the possibilities of vote selling and coercion.’”

Right to Work Supporters Will Fight Back in Every Possible Way

On June 23, the Committee’s sister organization, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, formally submitted comments to the NLRB urging the agency not to proceed with implementing an abuse-ridden electronic balloting scheme.

Mr. Mix, who heads the Foundation as well as the Committee, acknowledged that Wilma Liebman and her cohorts were unlikely to pay heed, but added that going on the record now would be helpful for a future legal challenge.

“Right to Work supporters will fight back against ‘electronic’ voting, also known as ‘card check light,’ in every possible way,” Mr. Mix vowed.

“If the NLRB goes ahead with its scheme, as now seems all but inevitable, the Right to Work movement will lead legislative as well as legal efforts to thwart it.”

The Democrat National Committee has surveyed its members to create a list of priority agenda items for the party and apparently someone forgot to get a sign off from the labor union bosses on the mailing.  The Card Check Forced Unionism bill was left off the list.

In 2007, Senator Arlen Specter voted for the Card Check Forced Unionism bill when he was a Republican.  Then, in 2009, he helped block the Card Check Forced Unionism bill when he was a Republican.  In the first session of this congress, he announced he was going to oppose the Card Check bill as a Democrat.  Now as a Democrat running for reelection he has worked overtime to carry the union boss agenda in the Senate.  Now, this current posture is paying dividends as he racks up endorsements of big labor including the SEIU, the PA AFL-CIO, the Teamsters and other big labor unions.

But, it appears that rank and file voters may reject the insider deal as polls of Democrat voters now show a majority rejecting Specter.  

From The Hill:  

McCaskill said that while senators were still negotiating the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a controversial bill to reform union organizing rules, it was unlikely to even include the actual “card check” provision itself, which has been the subject of malign by conservatives and business groups.

EFCA was a top priority of the labor community heading into last year’s Congress, but the emergence of a series of Democrats to have questioned some of its provisions, along with timing issues on jobs and healthcare legislation, had left the bill on the backburner. 

“I think there’s a lot of negotiation that’s going on about card check,” McCaskill said.

Does Barack Obama want to wreck the American economy? That’s one obvious and troubling question raised by his recess appointment of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.

People who know anything about labor law are extremely worried about this decision. Appointing Becker to the NLRB is a bit like assigning the fox to guard the hen house — if chicken were an endangered species.

The president’s political calculus was simple enough. The union bosses wanted Becker, and Obama wants the unions’ support in the midterm elections. Becker is a lawyer who has represented both the AFL-CIO and the SEIU (and, by extension, ACORN). He is at the leading edge of radical labor opinion.

To wit, Becker helped to pioneer the idea of card check that unions so desperately want to pass. This change in labor law would effectively substitute the public clipboard for the private ballot box, which Becker has disparaged as being “profoundly undemocratic.”

Card check is deeply unpopular and is not likely to be passed by Congress, but Becker may have a way around that. He has hinted that the NLRB may be able to impose changes on the way unionization elections are conducted without Congress legislating any changes in labor law. He has also advocated that companies not be allowed to participate in NLRB hearings or contest election results, and that they not be allowed to have observers at the polls to challenge ballot fraud.

Becker wants this pro-union tilt to labor law because he believes that all Americans should be represented by unions, whether they like it or not. He has written, “Just as U.S. citizens cannot opt against having a congressman, workers should not be able to choose against having a union as their monopoly-bargaining agent.”

Congress saw that Becker on the NLRB would be a one-man card check bill.

The liberal blog Plum Line recounts her requests for union cash and includes copies of her candidate questionnaire where she pledges support for big labor’s agenda.  As the headline states, “Lincoln Slams ‘Union Unions,’ But She Aggressively Sought Their Backing.”

Now, the the Obama administration is pushing new arbitration rules that would allow a union to gain representation certification in any company so long as it wins any representation election. The National Right to Work Foundation describes it in these terms:

“The new procedure would stack the deck in favor of unionization by granting a union monopoly bargaining power over workers if the union ‘wins’ an election, no matter how few eligible workers actually participate in the vote. In fact, this means that a small bloc of workers could force union boss ‘representation’ on the whole group as opposed to a true majority of all workers deciding for themselves.”

The foundation has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all NMB documents, including correspondence, transcripts or notes of meetings, reports or handouts, proposals, speeches, phone logs, or other writings or recordings, between [Harry] Hoglander or [Linda] Puchala and any union official or lobbyist concerning the proposed rule change.

“President Obama repeatedly promised a new era of openness, transparency, and ethics but has repeatedly violated that pledge when it comes to paying off Organized Labor bosses,” said Patrick Semmens, legal information director of the National Right to Work Foundation. “National Mediation Board members should comply with the letter and spirit of that policy by not making rulings that so directly benefit their recent associates, ALPA and AFA union officials, in their quest to force more workers into union ranks.”

This week Examiner columnist Irene Warren wrote:

“It was a nasty, ugly, three-year, million-dollar war. I did not ask for, but had to win. Otherwise, the business I loved would be infiltrated by a scheming labor union determined to undermine employee privacy rights and destroy my version of the American Dream,” Bego argueded. “The full-scale assault I experienced first-hand came from the two million member Service Employee Internationational Union (SEIU), and its president, Andy Stern.

From Bego’s perspective, he and his company was targeted by SEIU and Stern simply because he refused to sign a neutrailty agreement with the union: failing to accept the Card Check certifcation and the Employee Free Choice Act, which to this present day, Bego says denies U.S. workers their rights to form or not to form a union by way of the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) secret ballot election process.

Currently, Bego is working hard to prevent the passing of both the Card Check certification and the Employee Free Choice Act, as he continues to meet with Congressmen and Senators to discuss the alleged drawbacks in passing such measures, especially its impact on American businesses. Among those officials in which Bego has contacted and have received feedback are Senators Richard Lugar (R-IN), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Harry Reid (D-NV), and Arlen Spector (D-PA), and representative Mike Pence (R-IN).

“Congress will move to pass controversial “card check” legislation this year,” explained AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka to The Hill Newspaper writer Michael O’Brien Sunday, January 31, 2010. According to O’Brien, “Trumka said that lawmakers would pass the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as healthcare reform this year, despite Republicans having picked up enough votes in the Senate to sustain a filibuster.”

Despite his opposition, Bego and his supporters are not giving up in their quest to disarm policies in which he believes are a direct threat to “entrepreneurship, free enterprise, and capitalism.” In short, Congress is expected to vote on the measures within the next upcoming months, according to various news sources.

To view a YouTube video about SEIU Exposed, please click on the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djjt22emAck

Moderator: Tim Phillips, Americans for Prosperity

Rep. Eric Cantor (VA); Mark Mix, The National Right to Work;  Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia Attorney General;  Larry Eastland, PhD, LEA Capital Advisors

CPAC — The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC),  a project of the American Conservative Union Foundation in association with Young America’s Foundation and Human Events.

A former organizer for Operating Engineers Local 17 on Wednesday became the first person pleading guilty in connection with a labor racketeering case filed against construction union leaders almost two years ago.

James L. Minter III admitted that he engaged in a decade-long conspiracy, using threats, harassment and extortion against non-union construction workers and companies throughout Western New York.

The 38-year-old Buffalo man pleaded guilty Wednesday morning to a felony charge of racketeering conspiracy, appearing before U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny.

Illegal hardball tactics by Local 17 added millions of dollars to the costs of construction projects in the region over a 10-year period, according to federal prosecutors and agents.

Over the years, members of the local have been involved in disputes with non-union contractors at many major construction sites in the region, including Ralph Wilson Stadium, Roswell Park Cancer Institute and Buffalo State College.

Under advisory sentencing guidelines, Minter faces a possible prison term of at least four years and three months.

Minter admitted that he engaged in vandalism and intimidation against officials of five companies — Zoladz Construction, Environmental Strategies, Ontario Specialty Contracting, Ecology & Environment and Earth Tech — on several occasions between 2002 and 2005.

Minter’s plea deal is the first major development in the case since April 2008, when federal prosecutors charged Minter and 11 other union members and leaders with labor racketeering crimes.

The alleged crimes ranged from death threats and stabbings to pouring sand into the gas tanks of trucks owned by non-union construction workers.

“He’s pretty much taken responsibility for his actions since the day he was charged,” Minter’s attorney, Andrew C. LoTempio, told The Buffalo News after Wednesday’s court session.

“The amount of time he was facing — about 20 years — if the case went to trial and he lost, made this an easier decision for him.”

LoTempio said he is aware that several other men charged in the case are also contemplating taking guilty pleas.

“In every case, we’re open to reasonable dispositions, if they take into account the seriousness of the crimes and the rights of the victims,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles B. Wydysh said.

Wydysh and LoTempio declined to comment on whether Minter will testify against other union officials if other defendants go to trial.

Local 17 was investigated for years by agents from the Buffalo offices of the FBI and the U.S. Labor Department.

Richard Vedder of Ohio University observes that, between 2000 and 2008, more than one American a minute moved from a closed-shop state to a “right-to-work” state (ie, one where you cannot be forced to join a union as a condition of employment).

Stephen Walters of Loyola University finds that American cities with above-median unionisation rates have grown poorer and less populous.

Too much attention is paid to the budget deficit, says Mr Trumka, and not enough to the jobs deficit. Funds can be found by squeezing “Wall Street and the super-rich”, who must “pay their fair share…to rebuild the economy that they destroyed.”

As the Senate debates a jobs bill, it is worth knowing what Mr Obama’s most powerful backers want. Unions spent hundreds of millions of dollars on electing Democrats in 2008, and provided an army of campaign volunteers. They expect something back, and Mr Obama is keen to oblige—up to a point.

But his biggest favour has been green, foldable and borrowed. For example, he encourages the use of [Union-Only] “Project Labour Agreements” on big federal construction projects, whereby contractors must recruit through a union hiring hall. Such agreements inflate costs by 12-18%, according to David Tuerck of Suffolk University, and were banned under Mr Bush.

For the unions, public cash is a lifeline. The proportion of American workers at private firms who belong to unions tumbled from more than 30% in 1960 to 7% last year. By contrast, a hefty 40% of government workers are unionised and the rate has remained stable for decades. Under Mr Obama, the private sector has haemorrhaged jobs but the number of government workers has fallen only slightly. Last year for the first time more than half of American union members worked for the government.

Barack Obama and his closest allies have a message for America, and that message is: “Shut up.” 

Obama himself is famous for telling his critics to shut up: “I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking,” he said while defending his so-far ineffective economic-recovery agenda. “I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.” The president used the State of the Union address to hector, in a most unstatesmanlike fashion, the justices of the Supreme Court for upholding the First Amendment right of nonprofits and businesses to make their voices heard before elections, and demanded that Congress pass legislation to shut them up. Endlessly described as “articulate,” the president apparently desires to monopolize the conversation. But Craig Becker, his nominee to the powerful National Labor Relations Board, surpasses the president in that he has made an entire legal and political philosophy out of “shut your trap.”

The NLRB is one of our most defective public institutions. Charged with policing unfair labor practices in general, and with overseeing union-organizing votes in particular, the NLRB is far from a neutral referee — it acts principally as an organ of the unions themselves, and it bristles with hostility toward business owners who are not eager to have their operations organized by the likes of the Teamsters or the ACORN-affiliated Service Employees International Union. 

Becker, a lawyer for the AFL-CIO and SEIU, in many ways fits the mold of a typical Democratic pick for the agency, but there are three reasons to have serious reservations about putting him in such a powerful position. First: His opinions are extreme. He has argued that workers should be allowed to choose only between unions, not between a union and no representation, and he wants employers to be banned from even attending NLRB hearings about union elections. On the subject of the NLRB itself, he has gone so far as to write that “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 other words: “Shut up.” Second: He is affiliated with ACORN, a corrupt enterprise that works the intersection of Big Labor and politics for its own benefit. Third: He has lied to Congress about his relationship with ACORN. On all of those grounds, his nomination should be opposed, vigorously.

Becker’s various legal opinions share a peculiar theme: That of restricting the choices of both workers and business owners who do not wish to be affiliated with a labor union. There are many good reasons for both workers and owners to oppose unionization: Workers know from experience that the union bosses frequently prove more abusive and meddlesome than the worst of employers; and the history of the union-choked American automobile and steel industries, to take just two examples of many, suggest that the long-term consequences of union interference often include sector-wide bankruptcy and the loss of domestic jobs to more flexible (not necessarily cheaper — those Japanese steelworkers who outperformed their American counterparts weren’t exactly working for minimum wage) foreign competitors. Given a choice, many workers will elect not to join a union. Becker’s relentless support of “card check,” which in effect strips workers of their right to a secret ballot when voting on whether to organize a union, is one indicator of his hostility to letting workers and businesses choose for themselves, but there are even more troubling signs. …

Becker has worked for the SEIU, which has ties to ACORN, whose vote-fraud shenanigans and other dodgy activities are well known. Asked about his ties to ACORN by Sen. John McCain, Becker said that he had never done any work for “ACORN or ACORN-affiliated groups.” But we have a very good source confirming that the SEIU is ACORN-affiliated: ACORN, which listed various SEIU locals as affiliated groups on its website until that fact was noted by the Washington Examiner. (The uncensored page is available for your inspection here.)

ACORN’s usual modus operandi is to obscure its relationships to the greatest extent possible, but they are clear enough: sharing the same address with SEIU locals, millions of dollars in cozy financial relationships, etc. As the Examiner notes: “U.S. Department of Labor LM-2’s (financial disclosure forms) point to over $600,000 in transactions between these same SEIU locals and other ACORN operations. A 2007 LM-2 form shows SEIU Local 880, which is active in Illinois and Minnesota, donated $60,118 to ACORN for ‘membership services.’ Organized labor has kicked it back in the form of gifts and grants to ACORN totaling $2.4 million, the LM-2’s reveal.” SEIU, in turn, poured millions of dollars into the elections of Barack Obama and other Democrats — with $42 million in political expenditures in 2008, it ranked only behind the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee as a big political spender. Whatever one makes of ACORN and SEIU, Becker’s statement that he had never advised ACORN or any “ACORN-affiliated groups” is indefensible, and that alone should be grounds for opposing his appointment. 

There is good reason to be worried about the intersection of Big Labor and Big Government. The majority of American union members do not work in the private sector, laboring on assembly lines or in steel mills: More than half are employees of the government, where payrolls are swelling, and where the admixture of union power and government power is particularly noxious. It’s all good and fair that President Obama and his allies should attempt to tip the scales in their own favor, but violating the secret ballot — and the rights of Americans to make themselves heard and be represented in the political process — is wrong. “Shut up” is not much of a motto for a free country, or its leaders.

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