Washington, DC (March 29, 2010)<\/b> \u2013 After President Barack Obama installed Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lawyer Craig Becker as a recess appointee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Saturday, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys are now filing 12 recusal motions asking Becker to step aside in any pending case involving the Foundation.<\/p>\n
\nAs associate general counsel of the SEIU, Becker directly litigated against Foundation attorneys and helped orchestrate legal strategies for SEIU affiliates across the United States, so he should recuse himself from cases involving the SEIU or its affiliates. Moreover, his published writings indicate an extreme level of hostility against the Foundation and its legal arguments on behalf of workers, even when the NLRB or United States Supreme Court have agreed and ruled against union officials for their abusive practices.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe Foundation\u2019s free legal aid cases frequently involve unfair labor practices committed by union officials, such as coercive practices to corral workers into union membership and illegal use of fees paid by nonmembers for political purposes. Becker\u2019s record suggests he is unable to give workers who turn to the Foundation for help an impartial hearing and instead will simply rubber-stamp whatever union boss wrongdoings are put before him.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cCraig Becker\u2019s radical views on unionization caught the eyes of concerned citizens who normally don\u2019t pay much attention to obscure agencies like the NLRB,\u201d said Patrick Semmens, legal information director for the National Right to Work Foundation. \u201cBecker\u2019s record shows his personal bias and animosity specifically towards our nonprofit organization and generally towards workers who reject unionization or challenge union official abuse.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nIn a bipartisan vote, the Senate in February voted against moving the nomination forward over concerns of Becker\u2019s impartiality and whether he would use his seat on the federal agency to bypass a close vote in Congress and replace the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives with intimidating card check campaigns in which union operatives harass workers into signing union authorization cards.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe coercive nature of card check drives is at the heart of some of the cases in which the Foundation has asked for Becker\u2019s recusal. Union lawyers have devised a legal strategy to overturn Dana Corp<\/i>, a landmark case won by Foundation attorneys in which the NLRB granted employees the ability to file a decertification petition and demand a secret ballot election to toss out union officials from their workplace within 45 days after an employer recognizes a monopoly bargaining agent by card check.\n<\/p>\n
\nBecker has strongly criticized the Foundation\u2019s mere involvement in Dana<\/i>, as well as the independent discretion of the NLRB\u2019s General Counsel to put the case before the Board. Foundation attorneys have several Dana<\/i> decertification petitions pending with the NLRB, but Becker appears to have pre-judged the issues at stake.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe National Right to Work Foundation is the only charitable organization providing free legal aid to workers victimized by union boss abuse,\u201d continued Semmens. \u201cThese workers deserve a fair hearing.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington, DC (March 29, 2010)<\/b> \u2013 After President Barack Obama installed Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lawyer Craig Becker as a recess appointee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Saturday, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys are now filing 12 recusal motions asking Becker to step aside in any pending case involving the Foundation.<\/p>\n
\nAs associate general counsel of the SEIU, Becker directly litigated against Foundation attorneys and helped orchestrate legal strategies for SEIU affiliates across the United States, so he should recuse himself from cases involving the SEIU or its affiliates. Moreover, his published writings indicate an extreme level of hostility against the Foundation and its legal arguments on behalf of workers, even when the NLRB or United States Supreme Court have agreed and ruled against union officials for their abusive practices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[888],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n