President Obama owes it to the American worker to make a recess appointment of Craig Becker -- and not just because Becker is a highly qualified nominee to a board that is currently hamstrung by vacancies, and unable to act.

Earlier this week, Republicans proved the lesson we all learned in school, “the majority rules,” doesn’t apply to the U.S. Senate. With every single Republican vote and two from defecting Democrats (see below), Republicans [1] sustained a filibuster against Craig Becker’s nomination to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

In a clear indication that labor unions are running out of patience with the Obama administration, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka sent out a sharply worded action alert to its entire e-mail list Friday evening, urging phone calls to the White House to protest its inaction on two nominees to the National Labor Relations Board.

As the current NLRB chair, Clinton appointee Wilma Liebman, noted, "The board lost its credibility." The number of cases brought before it dropped by half as the Bush administration "urned labor law inside out and missed opportunities to make the law more effective."

The Bush-controlled board limited the ability of illegally fired workers to recover back pay, allowed employers to discriminate against union supporters in hiring and made it much harder to form unions.

Providence Journal

By Gina Macris

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — The regional director of the National Labor Relations Board has rebuffed unionized Head Start workers who had filed an unfair labor practice charge against the program management, Children’s Friend & Service, saying there is no evidence the agency tried to thwart collective bargaining.

Chas Walker, organizer for District 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, said the group will appeal to the national office of the NLRB to overturn the decision of Regional Director Rosemary Pye.

Early in 2009, Children’s Friend was awarded a $7-million annual contract to run Head Start for about 1,100 pre-school children in Providence and the Blackstone Valley, replacing a previous contractor which lost federal funding in 2007 because of poor management.

Almost all the 200 Head Start employees had continued working for a Denver-based provider hired by the federal Department of Health and Human Services to provide interim management until a new local agency could be selected to run the program.

Children’s Friend, which took over Head Start in June 2009, made it clear that all employees would have to re-apply for their jobs to continue working.

The union maintains that after Children’s Friend discovered workers had unionized, it reneged on promises it made in its Head Start application to rehire all existing qualified employees and work with them to meet higher educational goals required by the federal government in 2011 and 2013.

The NLRB regional director said that “there was no evidence that [Children’s Friend] had purposely refused to hire employees of a predecessor employer in order to avoid its obligation to bargain with the union.”

“Rather, it appeared from the evidence that in narrowing its field of qualified candidates from 180 to 168, union membership or active participation was not considered a factor,” Pye, the regional director, said in a letter dated Jan. 22.

Pye also said there was insufficient evidence to support the union’s allegations that Children’s Friend engaged in an anti-union campaign to “interfere with, restrain and coerce employees in their exercise of protected concerted activities.”

Walker, meanwhile, said the details of the appeal have not yet been formulated.

gmacris@projo.com

In this case, McCain wants to score political points by stalling a pro-labor nominee. As a legal scholar, Becker helped lay the intellectual foundation for the Employee Free Choice Act.

The signature achievement of the late Republican ascendancy was government failure. Regulators scaled back enforcement. Agencies were filled with former lobbyists.

It worked superbly for the party's supporters, but not so well for the rest of us. And today, though the GOP has paid for its sins at the polls, it is still playing the same game.

It's not clear when lawmakers will consider the appointments or whether a hearing will be set. Given the likelihood that an Obama board would reverse several Bush-era precedents, Republicans may be in no rush.

Here is what the largest U.S.-based law firm exclusively devoted to representing management in employment and labor law matters is telling them to watch for

It is widely predicted that the new Obama board will reverse as many of these controversial pro-employer Bush board precedents as they can get their hands on.

Labor Day is a time to reflect on the achievements of the American worker and our nation's commitment to helping all families pursue the American Dream. But for millions of Americans there is little cause for celebration.

Returning to school after winter break, Austin Garrido found that Uloop, an online marketplace for college students, had cut his hourly pay.  

Elsewhere on the University of California-Polytechnic's campus in Pomona, his co-worker Sarah Doolittle also discovered a light paycheck

"The administration is showing once again that it would rather spend its time on a witch hunt aimed at unions than on advancing the interests of workers," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in a statement.