Now, it appears there may be some merit to our (and others’) arguments:
In the least surprising news of the week, Craig Becker — Big Labor’s go-to legal expert — has served on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for barely three months, and he’s already under investigation.
[snip]
Aside from impartiality, the other concern about Becker was that the former associate general counsel for the radical Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and AFL-CIO lawyer would be embroiled with conflicts of interest regarding unions he’s now charged with overseeing.
Sure enough, on June 2, Becker joined in on an NLRB decision involving SEIU Local 1957 and denied St. Barnabas Hospital’s request to review a union election. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa, R-Calif., asked the Inspector General to examiner Becker’s conflict of interest in the matter. An investigation is underway.
When you’ve received numerous paychecks from the nation’s two largest unions, upholding that ethics pledge would mean recusing yourself from an enormous number of disputes that come before the NLRB. So Becker came up with a novel solution to this quandary — he ignores the ethics pledge.
The NLRB told The Washington Examiner Becker isn’t commenting on the investigation but did pass along a windy ruling Becker authored on recusal motions. Becker argues it would be appropriate to recuse him from cases involving the national SEIU but not cases involving the local chapters because they are “distinct legal entit[ies].”
Does Becker’s hairsplitting seem reasonable? Hardly. The SEIU’s own constitution says the national union has “jurisdiction over its affiliated bodies and all Local Unions.”
Gee, that argument sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
You can read the rest of WashEx’s piece here.
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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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