PRESIDENT OBAMA PLAYS THREE CARD MONTE AT THE NLRB

From the desk of Stephen Cabot

The National Labor Relations Board needs a quorum of three. If President Obama hopes to enact his pro-union agenda, he will need to have another pro-union advocate on the NLRB. He won’t say who is the pro-union advocate; he won’t even say that there is a pro-union advocate.

But as the names are flipped from hand to hand, one name keeps turning up. And if you guessed Craig Becker, you would be right.

According to The Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com) “In a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article [Becker] said that the ‘core defect in union election law…is the employer’s status as a party to labor representation proceedings’ and that ‘employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees’ election of representatives.’”

If an NLRB member believes that employers should not be permitted to educate their employees about he disadvantages of unionization, he can hardly be considered a fair minded adjudicator of labor issues.

Yet, according to Senator Tom Harkin, President Obama will appoint Craig Becker to the NLRB during the Easter recess. It’s called a recess appointment, and it’s an end run around the Senate. No votes are required.

With his pro-union advocates on the NLRB, President Obama will have won his three card Monte game, for no matter which member Corporate America appeals to, the results will always favor the union.