thetruthaboutefca.com | The Truth About The Employee Free Choice Act & Card Check

Sen. Lindsey Graham says card check was facing a tough fate, but isn’t dead:

Some new items to keep you up to date:

• Card Check called a “lie”: Card Check is Obama
  

Among the continuing reaction to news of the president’s ill-advised recess appointment of union attorney Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board comes from none other than a former Member of that board.

We tracked down John Raudabaugh, formerly of the NLRB and now of Nixon Peabody, with a question we’d received about the president’s departure from the standard practice of appointing members from both parties. Here’s what Mr. Raudabaugh offered:

“The NLRB is now 3 to 1. On August 27, it will be 3 to 0. Not since the New Deal and first six years of the NLRB, 1935-1941, has the Board been all Democrats or all from one party. Labor law reform followed in 1947 to balance the scales. Is the past to be prologue”

It’s hard to beat the expertise of someone’s who has sat in that very chair. And so many historical parallels one could get into …

UPDATE: More reaction coming in … The US Chamber adds 50 cases to keep an eye on and warns employers to be on red alert.

UPDATE(d) UPDATE: Thanks to BigGovernment.com readers for joining us! Also se more from Rob Bluey of Heritage, who writes: “The appearance of preferential treatment hasn

Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) 2010 National Chairman Jim Elmer, president of James W. Elmer Construction Co., Spokane, Wash., today issued the following statement in reaction to President Obama

The big news of the weekend — was it planned to be dumped with the Friday trash? — was the president’s recess appointment of union attorney Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, where his previous anti-employer (and arguably anti-employee) views could threaten workplace democracy.

That leads the chatter around the blogosphere.

The Daily Caller reported it as “Obama rewards unions with key labor appointee,” while noting all 41 Republican Senators sent a letter to the president urging him not to move forward with Becker’s recess appointment. The wording left nothing to the imagination, saying Obama gave “organized labor a big payback for its help in pushing his health-care reform across the finish line, unilaterally appointing a controversial pro-union attorney…”

Investors Business Daily reflects on the stakes involved and turns to the words of the AFL-CIO’s own Stewart Acuff, “If we aren’t able to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, we will work with President Obama and Vice President Biden and their appointees to the National Labor Relations Board to change the rules governing forming a union through administrative action.”

Elsewhere, Chris Stirewalt of the Washington Examiner writes: “Now that Obamacare is the law of the land, Democrats promise to take on global warming, card check, immigration and a regulatory crackdown on banks.”

The White House has named union attorney Craig Becker (whom this blog has dubbed the Card Check King) to the high post of the National Labor Relations Board, utilizing a contentious “recess appointment” that allows Becker to bypass the Constitutionally envisioned confirmation process.

As Carter Wood notes, it’s questionable whether Becker would have been approved by the Senate:

Becker was indeed approved by the Senate HELP Committee on a partyline vote, but as noted, he lacked sufficient support in the full Senate to win confirmation. Opposing him were two Democratic Senators, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas.

More importantly, Wood writes, the “business community has vigorously opposed the Becker appointment because of his record of radical views on labor that would exclude any employer involvement, including expression of opinion, when unions try to organize a business.”

The tally: Recess appointments for union lawyers and the school of hard knocks for workplace democracy.