National Right to Work Committee Legislative Director Greg Mourad sits down with Breitbart TV to discuss Craig Becker, Obama's radical nominee to the National Labor Relations Board. Click here to listen or use the embeddable player below:
A longer video of the show can be found here. You can also listen to the Foundation's podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed.
Today, President Barack Obama's nomination of pro-compulsory unionism radicalCraig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is scheduled to be taken up in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
National Right to Work President Mark Mix warns in today's Washington Times of the grave dangers Becker's possible confirmation will pose to workers' rights:
When the union bosses have the NLRB in their fold, workers who try to exercise their legal rights to dismiss unwanted union monopoly bargaining agents - or even to stop their forced dues from being used to elect handpicked Big Labor candidates - are denied even the most basic protections.
That's why, especially considering Mr. Becker's record, it's not a stretch to believe that - should he be confirmed by the U.S. Senate - Mr. Becker wouldn't think twice about rubber-stamping even the most abusive forced unionism schemes cooked up by union militants.
In fact, as a former AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lawyer, Mr. Becker is solely responsible for forcing tens of thousands of workers under union boss control.
In one case, reports from a Los Angeles SEIU local union revealed that almost 63,000 people rejected membership in the union in 2007, but thanks to Mr. Becker, were still forced to pay dues.
And Mr. Becker's own words explain why. He was even so bold as to say unions were "formed to escape the evils of individualism and individual competition ... their actions necessarily involve coercion."
With that kind of anything-goes attitude, it's no surprise Mr. Becker supports "home visits," in which union militants repeatedly harass workers at home until they sign union-authorization cards, and even advocates letting Mr. Obama's handpicked arbiters impose contracts on workers, without even allowing the workers to vote on their own contract.
In fact, Mr. Becker is so extreme he actually believes the only choice workers should have is which union they should be forced to join and pay dues to!
In Mr. Becker's view, if an independent worker refuses to pick, he and the rest of Big Labor's lackeys on the NLRB should be able to choose a union for that worker. This kind of Big Labor kowtowing is not only outrageous, but it's also dangerous.
To read all of Mark Mix's op-ed in the Washington Timesclick here.
Though it doesn't get nearly as much attention as other high-profile appointments, President Obama has recently nominated several new members to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a federal agency which oversees private sector labor relations and the federal policy of forced unionism.
These appointments have far-reaching implications for employee freedom, so it's important that NLRB nominees are thoroughly vetted before they take office.
Unfortunately, Obama's latest choice for the NLRB, Craig Becker, has radical views on the extent of union coercive power, and he comes directly out of the all-powerful Service Employees International Union (SEIU) whose bosses have been as thick as thieves with the notoriously corrupt Big Labor front group ACORN. Here's The Wall Street Journal on Becker's troubling history and his role in drafting Obama executive orders while on the SEIU union payroll:
One of Big Labor's priorities in Washington is to place allies in key government jobs where they can overturn existing labor policy without battles in Congress. This is a very good reason for the Senate to hold a hearing on the nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Mr. Becker is associate general counsel at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which is most recently in the news for its close ties to Acorn, the disgraced housing shakedown operation. President Obama nominated Mr. Becker in April to the five-member NLRB, which has the critical job of supervising union elections, investigating labor practices, and interpreting the National Labor Relations Act. In a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article, written when he was a UCLA professor, Mr. Becker argued for rewriting current union-election rules in favor of labor. And he suggested the NLRB could do this by regulatory fiat, without a vote of Congress.
Read the whole thing here. As a member of the NLRB, Becker will be in a position to rewrite American labor law and achieve his stated goals of marginalizing employees from the process of deciding whether they are unionized. Allies of worker freedom should be extremely concerned about this nomination.
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Previous Foundation coverage of Becker's radical views can be found here, here and here.
In recent weeks, President Barack Obama nominated AFL-CIO and SEIU union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the quasi-judicial agency that administers federal labor law. Some of the Board's most important functions include overseeing the secret ballot elections in union certification drives and resolving unfair labor practices committed by union organizers.
But Becker's employment history and published writings indicate his extreme hostility to both the secret ballot and true employee free choice. As a member of the NLRB, Becker would likely rubber stamp the most abusive forced unionism schemes cooked up by union militants to compel independent-minded American workers to accept their "representation" and pay dues.
In this special video report hosted at the National Right to Work Committee's website, Committee President Mark Mix analyzes Becker's extreme views. Becker:
Supports "home visits," in which union goons repeatedly harass workers at home until they sign union authorization cards (see here for an example of this intimidating practice)
Advocates letting government arbiters impose contracts on workers and employers on workers, without even allowing the workers to vote on the contract (a practice which even Far Left icon George McGovern opposes)
Believes employers should be absolutely prohibited from sharing any truthful and noncoercive information with employees about the effects of unionization
Illogically and radically compares union certification elections to US Congressional elections, stating that the only question decided in such elections should be which union gets monopoly control over workers, not whether they wish to remain independent and union free.
Watch the full video below to learn more.
For more on Becker's nomination and radical forced unionism views, read this Wall Street Journal editorial. To download the National Right to Work Committee's Becker Alert, click here.
