As the smoke clears on the bi-partisan blockage of SEIU-radical attorney Craig Becker to a seat on the “independent” National Labor Relations Board, an e-mail sent from a SEIU staffer to Senators on February 3rd is worthy of closer examination as it reveals just how much control the purple behemoth of a union has over the Democrats in Washington.

Last week’s e-mail was sent from an SEIU “legislative consultant,” Alison Reardon who, according to the SEIU’s financial reports, spends 100% of her time on “political activities and lobbying.” 

In other words, Ms. Reardon is a lobbyist representing a powerful special interest–the SEIU–in trying to get one of her colleagues confirmed on a federal agency that has jurisdiction over nearly every private-sector workplace in America.

What is surprising about the e-mail is the controlling tone she takes with the senators, as well as the information she divulges.  Or, rather, the source of her information, the Senate Majority Leader himself, Harry Reid.

From: Alison Reardon [mailto:alison.reardon@seiu.org]
Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 4:29 PM

Subject: HELP Ex Session 10:00 am 2/4

Senator,

Your attendance is crucial to appointing Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board(NLRB) Please attend Thursday’s HELP Ex Session to report out President Obama’s nomination of Craig Becker for Senate confirmation. This is the highest prionty for organized labor, and Majority Leader Reid will file Cloture on Friday 2/5, and has assured us that Senate will vote to end debate at 5 p m Monday 2/8.

Please contact me if you have any questions, and to confirm Senator’s attendance on Thursday, at 10 00 a.m  [Emphasis added.]

Alison Reardon
Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
Legislative Consultant

202.330.1020 (c)

Again, this is a lobbyist who is lobbying to get a colleague seated as one of five members of a federal agency that has jurisdiction over nearly every private-sector workplace in America.

What is wrong with this picture?

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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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People are policy and while much attention has been focused on the profusion of buffoons and poltroons Obama has installed at the cabinet and sub-cabinet level positions in his administration, the real work of radically changing the character of our government has been entrusted to anonymous apparatchiks.

Some of these have bubbled to the top and have resignd: green czar and self identified communist Van Jones, UN financial reform guru and part time identity thief Jide Zeitlin, performance czar and tax cheat Nancy Killefer. Safe schools czar and pedophile apologist Kevin Jennings remains on the job as do others.

Today, however, we may have won one small battle in the war to keep the adminstrative machinery of the nation out of the hands of people who are opposed to our system of goverment. Obama’s nomination to fill the a vacant seat on the National Labor Relations Board has fallen to a bipartisan fillibuster.

Read More →

Great Scott! * **

Things in Washington seem to be changing by the hour!

Ever since Scott Brown won the Massachusetts special election last month, Harry Reid and his Democrat cohorts have been gaming the system, trying to rush through Big Labor’s President Obama’s controversial nominations like Patricia Smith (as the Department of Labor’s solicitor) and Craig Becker before Brown could be seated.

Now, Scott plans to try and stop Reid in his tracks, saying he wants to be sworn in immediately, not next week and Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick appears ready to certify Brown as early as tomorrow at 9:30 am.

Patrick is planning to certify the results at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, said governor’s spokesman Kyle Sullivan. “This will ensure that Senator-elect Brown’s request to receive the final paperwork by 11 a.m. tomorrow is fulfilled,” Sullivan said in a statement.

Vice President Joe Biden would have to administer the oath of office, and top Senate Democrats appeared ready this afternoon to move on Brown’s request.

“Once he gets the certificate in hand, he can be sworn in,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate majority leader Harry Reid. “We are working to swear him in as quickly as possible, which would be as early as tomorrow afternoon.”

There are several votes coming up within the next week that are expected to be controversial, including nominees for solicitor of labor and the US General Services Administration. A vote could come next week on whether to confirm Craig Becker, a Chicago-based union attorney who was nominated by President Obama to the National Labor Relations Board.

Votes on a major jobs bill could also come next week.

If Scott Brown is seated tomorrow, it is not a moment too soon.

Needless to say, however, union bosses are really, really mad.

The labor community is fuming over the expedited plan to seat Senator-elect Scott Brown (R-Mass) this Thursday afternoon, arguing that Democratic leadership is torpedoing one of its most important causes — the nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.

[snip]

“Democrats were outmaneuvered yet again,” emailed a labor source who was granted anonymity to speak freely. “I’m used to us caving, but they didn’t even [try to delay Brown's seating]. They just hit the mat.

“I love how we cave to the Republicans and won’t seat our Senator, [Al] Franken. Then we reverse cave and seat their senator. I mean forget the analogy of one is playing checkers and the other playing chess. It’s like one is playing chess while the other is sitting there picking their nose.”

As the NAM’s blog Shopfloor notes:

Caterwauling, too. There’s caterwauling.

Organized labor has elevated the importance of Becker’s nomination, logically viewing him as their man on the NLRB. This afternoon, in an e-mail to Senate staff, the SEIU declared, “This is the highest priority for organized labor…”

We note this background paragraph in Stein’s story:

An associate general counsel for the Service Employees International Union since 1990 and previously counsel for the AFL-CIO, Becker was targeted immediately by GOP lawmakers for being too sympathetic to labor for a post at the NLRB. The White House urged unions not to launch a public campaign around his appointment, arguing that it would pass Congress via an “inside game,” a source working on the process told the Huffington Post. 

Was he targeted immediately? We don’t recall that. But if so, perhaps it’s because Becker wrote one of the Obama’s Administration’s first executive orders to slant federal regs toward organized labor.

Purple heads must be spinning and pea soup flying over at the SEIU right now. 

*   pun intended

** Emphasis added throughout post

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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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Cross-posted.

Following the near-certain death of the union bosses’ hallucinogenically-named (and growingly unpopular)Employee Free Choice Act, the Democrats in the Senate are looking to throw their union cronies a bone by getting SEIU and AFL-CIO attorney Craig Becker seated to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) quickly, perhaps as soon as this week.

As the rules and the policies set forth through the NLRB affect nearly every private-sector workplace (except airlines and railroads), the persons who serve as NLRB members, regardless of their backgrounds, should be able to decide on cases with an open mind and issue decisions that are balanced, based on the law.

The problem with Becker, according to many, is not that he’s merely a union radical (there are already enough of those to populate a big city—say Washington, DC or Detroit?).  The problem with Becker is that he is a union extremist and, by all accounts, appears to be opposed to individual rights for employees and their employers.

According to the worker advocacy group the National Right to Work Foundation, Becker:

• Supports “home visits,” in which union goons repeatedly harass workers at home until they sign union authorization cards (see here for an example of this intimidating practice)
• Advocates letting government arbiters impose contracts on workers and employers on workers, without even allowing the workers to vote on the contract (a practice which even Far Left icon George McGovern opposes)
• Believes employers should be absolutely prohibited from sharing any truthful and noncoercive information with employees about the effects of unionization
• Illogically and radically compares union certification elections to US Congressional elections, stating that the only question decided in such elections should be which union gets monopoly control over workers, not whether they wish to remain independent and union free. [Emphasis added.]

Katie Packer, executive director of the Workforce Fairness Institute, delves further into Mr. Becker’s “threat to freedom“:

Currently, Becker serves as Associate General Counsel to both the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

Most Americans have probably never heard of Mr. Becker and he may be a perfectly nice human being, but his views on the absolute and autocratic power labor should wield over small businesses is enough to make one shudder.

Becker has written that, “employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees’ election of representatives.” Simply stated, Becker believes small businesses should have no say whatsoever over their own future, while union bosses have complete control.

In Craig Becker’s perfect world, every worker in America would be in a union, whether they choose to be there or not.

[snip]

As a member of the board, Becker would have significant authority to enact the SEIU and AFL-CIO’s agenda by fiat meaning the executive branch would do via administrative action what they have been unable to get enacted through elected representatives in the legislature who are directly accountable to voters.

And there should be absolutely no doubt what Big Labor’s agenda is… the forced unionization of small businesses so that billions in additional dollars from union member dues can flow into their coffers and they can continue to play kingmaker funneling massive amounts of money to the politicians who do their bidding.

Craig Becker’s nomination is a threat to freedom and must not be allowed to go forward. The Senate will hold a hearing on Becker’s nomination this coming week. [Emphasis added.]

There are those who fight for freedom and there are those who fight to end freedom.

Unfortunately, Mr. Becker seems to fall in the latter of the two groups.

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“Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group . . . and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force—and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism.” Ayn Rand.

“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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Cross-posted.