The U.S. Senate's health and labor committee is set to hold a hearing today on Craig Becker's nomination to the National Labor Relations Board -- what Democrats are saying is the first hearing for an NLRB nominee since 1993.
Becker's nomination faces opposition from business groups because of his long advocacy on behalf of unions. He has served as associate general counsel to two of the nation's largest labor organizations, the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO, and in 2007, in a losing effort before the U.S. Supreme Court, Becker argued that a home health attendant was entitled to overtime and a minimum wage.
President Barack Obama nominated Becker in April, and Becker later won the backing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Republicans, including Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), held up a vote by the full Senate and sent Becker’s nomination back to the White House in December. Obama then renominated Becker.
The committee is scheduled to a hold a hearing at 4 p.m. today, allowing senators their first chance to question Becker live and on camera. A spokeswoman for the committee’s Democrats says it will be the first hearing for an NLRB nominee since William Gould IV went before the committee in 1993. President Bill Clinton had nominated Gould, a Stanford University law professor, for chairman, and the Senate later confirmed him.
Video for the hearing should be available here.
The five-seat NLRB has only two confirmed members, and it’s not clear whether that’s enough to conduct business. Appeals courts for the 7th and D.C. circuits split on the question, and the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in March on whether the NLRB’s decisions are valid when it has only two members. Two other NLRB nominees are awaiting votes by the full Senate: Senate Republican staffer Brian Hayes and Buffalo labor lawyer Mark Pearce.
The window to confirm Becker may be closing because Sen.-elect Scott Brown (R-Mass.) is set to be sworn in Feb. 11, reducing the Democrats’ caucus to 59 votes or one fewer than they would need to break a filibuster.
Check here later for coverage of the hearing.
I think the primary reason Craig Becker's nomination is so controversial is that the public positions he has taken are so extreme.
For example, Becker once wrote, in a journal entitled New Labor Forum: "At first blush it might seem fair to give workers the choice to remain unrepresented. But, in giving workers this option, US labor law grants employers a powerful incentive to campaign for a vote of no representation." Elsewhere in the article, Becker bemoaned the fact that private-sector unionization is lower in the U.S. than in many other countries and indicated the reason is that "the law does not mandate a system of democratic workplace governance."
In other words, workers should have no choice, either individually or collectively, over whether or not they have an "exclusive" union bargaining agent. That should be "mandated." Workers' only choice should be over which union they get.
This perspective, which Becker has reiterated in at least one other forum, is way outside the mainstream of American thought on labor policy, and is simply unfitting for an NLRB nominee.
Stan Greer
National Right to Work Committee
National Institute for Labor Relations Research
Posted by: Stan Greer | February 02, 2010 at 12:43 PM