Craig Becker, the man who would be SEIU's point person at the National Labor Relations Board has been roundly criticized because of his anti-choice belief for workers' rights on unionization.
As opposed to being neutral, according to the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Becker's a union bias is alarming:
In a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article, written when he was a UCLA professor, he explained that traditional notions of democracy should not apply in union elections. He wrote that employers should be barred from attending NLRB hearings about elections, and from challenging election results even amid evidence of union misconduct. He believes elections should be removed from work sites and held on "neutral grounds," or via mail ballots. Employers should also be barred from "placing observers at the polls to challenge ballots."
Moreover, Mr. Becker's seems to believe that workers choice should not be whether or not to be unionized, but which union to be unionized by:
“To try to justify his extremist position, Mr. Becker, associate general counsel for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO, borrowed an extraordinary analogy:
“Just as U.S. citizens cannot opt against having a congressman, he contended, workers should not be able to choose against having a union as their monopoly-bargaining agent.
“‘Employees' only choice, explained Mr. Becker, should be over which set of union officials get ‘exclusive’ power to negotiate their wages, benefits, and work rules.”
Mr. Becker also appears to disagree with employers having private property rights or the right to speak to employees on a decision that could drastically affect its business (and their jobs):
More extraordinary, Mr. Becker advocated a new "body of campaign rules" that would severely limit the ability of employers to argue against unionization. He argued that any meeting a company holds that involves a "captive audience" ought to be grounds for overturning an election. If a company wants to distribute leaflets that oppose the union, for example, Mr. Becker said it must allow union access to its private property to do the same.
Mr. Becker also, according to today's US Chamber letter to Capitol Hill, appears to not believe in the First Amendment right of employers:
Mr. Becker has written prolifically about the National Labor Relations Act, the law he would be charged with interpreting and enforcing should he be confirmed. Many of the positions taken in his writings are well outside the mainstream and would disrupt years of established precedent and the delicate balance in current labor law. These positions have raised significant concerns in the employer community, for example, the extent to which he would restrictively interpret employers’ free speech rights.
Apparently, President Obama and Senate Democrats would rather appease the SEIU and other unions than respect the Constitutional rights of employers and their employees.
[Emphasis added throughout.]
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"I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes." Thomas Paine December 23, 1776
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