Marathon Pundit: NLRB overreach: Conflict of interest edition

Card check radical Craig Becker is back in the news. More on card check a few posts down. Did someone say "conflict of interest?" From the American Spectator:

For the last few months, Boeing has been clashing with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over its decision to locate a plant in South Carolina. The NLRB argues that the airplane manufacturer illegally moved work from union factories in Washington state to a new $1 billion facility in the right-to-work Palmetto State.

NLRB lawyers maintain this is straightforward retaliation against union workers, based on comments allegedly made by Boeing executives themselves. Business leaders have denounced this as an unprecedented bit of federal pro-union advocacy, with the House of Representatives last week voting to halt the Boeing case and others like it.

The battle may soon intensify. Federal financial disclosure forms reveal that Craig Becker, a key union-friendly vote on the NLRB, owned stock in Boeing at the beginning of this year. Becker is one of federal agency's Democratic board members.

According to documents obtained by the National Right to Work Committee, as of January 2011 Becker owned between $1,001 and $15,000 in Boeing stock, earning between $201 and $1,000 in dividends. This particular public financial disclosure report does not require more specific information.

The House is working to defund the NLRB. From the Daily Caller:

The House appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services and Education is attacking funding for Obamacare, the Labor Department and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

According to subcommittee chairman, Montana Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg, the appropriations bill would prevent the Obama administration from implementing Obamacare until the Supreme Court rules on the case. It also defunds the NLRB’s attempts to implement "quickie elections" for unions and defunds implementation of the NLRB's "poster rule," which requires employers nationwide to hang pro-union posters in workplaces.

The "quickie elections" rule the NLRB recently passed allows unions to hold a workforce election within just seven to ten days after requesting one. For decades, unions has to wait about 45 days or longer after requesting an election to hold one. That ensured workers and the company had enough time to catch up and become fully informed on what was happening, as union leaders usually already know what's going on because they deal with labor relations issues all the time.

The NLRB poster rule, which is currently being challenged in court, would require employers to hang posters in the workplace informing workers of their right to unionize. If business refuse or fail to hang to correct posters, the NLRB rule says they'll be committing an "unfair labor practice," which opens them up to more scrutiny from Labor officials in the Obama administration and a possible investigation. The rule is expected to affect all employers nationwide.

Right-to-work laws are getting a boost. From The Street:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney both say they support a national right-to-work law.

Workers outside right-to-work states currently are obligated to pay the union fees as a condition ofemployment at firms that have unions, which is in accordance with the National Labor Relations Act. But the unions cannot demand membership.

More...

Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) introduced the National Right to Work Act in March 2011, which aimed to protect "the free choice of individuals to form, join, or assist labor organizations, or to refrain from such activities."

And one more...

Both politicians say they disagree with federal law that requires non-union employees to pay union dues at an agency-shop firm.

Union card check is alive and well.

From Big Government:

As noted in a previous BigGovernment posting, the Obama NLRB has literally chosen to shred secret ballots and thus democracy in the workplace. In what clearly was a gift to Big Labor and its collusive agreements with certain employers, the NLRB took away the right for employees to have a secret ballot election immediately following a coercive union 'card check' drive. In addition, it retroactively took action and cancelled secret ballots that had already been cast or were set to be cast.

Barbara Ivey of the forced unionism state of Oregon and her co-workers were victims of the totalitarian NLRB actions. On August 26th, as Big Labor Attorney and NLRB Chair Wilma Liebman's term expired and she slinked back to her Big Labor law practice, the NLRB voted to repeal "DANA rights" in its Lamons Gasket decision.

Mrs. Ivey was invited by the Education & Workforce Committee to testify about her shock that the U.S. government took away her right to a secret ballot, especially since the NLRB had earlier said she had the right and had scheduled the vote only days after the fateful Lamons Gasket decision. She and her fellow employees never got a chance for a secret ballot to vote, and now she will be forced to pay tribute to an SEIU union boss in order to keep her job.

The video above is taken from the Education & Workforce Committee hearing where the Obama NLRB usurpation of power and destruction of individual liberty is on display. Because of this decision numerous secret ballots that have already cast in workplaces across the country will never be counted. The ballots reportedly are currently stored at NLRB, then will eventually be shredded or disposed of in another manner.

Writing for the Hattiesburg American, US Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS):

The NLRB's complaint came after Boeing had begun construction on the near-billion dollar assembly plant and 1,000 people already had been put to work. This sort of action by the NLRB in South Carolina only serves to fuel the uncertainty in the market that is keeping investors on the sideline and people out of work.

At a time when 14 million Americans are out of work, the government should reduce hurdles obstructing job growth and stop the practice of entangling the private sector in excessive legal process and regulation. To get our economy growing again, we should be rewarding innovators and entrepreneurs for creating jobs, not punishing them.

The federal government should not be in the business of dictating where an employer can and cannot locate jobs. To get the economy back on track, the private sector needs the flexibility to develop their businesses in the state that offers the best opportunities for expansion, job creation and stability.

That's why my colleagues and I passed the Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act. The bill will remove the threat of arbitrary government interference in private-sector business decisions and provide the confidence necessary to create American jobs.

Hypocrisy from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review:

AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka's criticism of anti-union thuggery abroad is a self-serving ploy that cynically and deliberately whitewashes his record of encouraging pro-union thuggery at home.

A letter opposing America's pending free-trade deal with Colombia that Mr. Trumka sent on Monday to President Obama included a list of 22 Colombian union leaders who've been killed. He wrote that "Colombia should not be rewarded with a trade agreement until it develops a proven track record ... of preventing violence against union leaders ... ."

Yet Trumka, as United Mine Workers president during a 1993 strike against Peabody Coal, exhorted union members to "kick the (expletive deleted) out of every last" worker who dared cross UMW members' picket lines.

And after one worker who had crossed a UMW picket line -- Eddie York, 39 -- was fatally shot in the head while leaving a job in Logan County, W.Va., Trumka declared: "I'm saying if you strike a match and put your finger in it, you're likely to get burned." And then denied that was a threat.