So argues Katie Packer, executive director of the Workforce Fairness Institute, in an op-ed in today’s Washington Times, “True intentions exposed,” revealing the not-so-secret agenda of Andy Stern of the SEIU and the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka in pushing the nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. The Senate last week failed to invoke cloture on Becker’s nomination by a bipartisan, 52-33 vote.

Just days ago, Mr. Trumka wrote, “The NLRB’s job is to protect workers’ rights - but for more than two years it has been functioning with only two members instead of the five it should have. Working people need an NLRB that can enforce the National Labor Relations Act - not one hobbled by vacancies. … These next few weeks will be crucial in building support for a fully functional NLRB.”

So, the Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI) took Mr. Trumka at his word and called on the U.S. Senate to move expeditiously on the other outstanding nominations to the NLRB, namely Democrat Mark Pearce and Republican Brian Hayes. This would give the NLRB the quorum it needs to do its job.

In related dissections of Big Labor’s rhetoric,  LaborPains.org reads a recent opinion column in Politico by William Forbath, professor of law and history at the University of Texas and author of Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement. What’s Forbath’s real goal in supporting the nomination of Becker to the NLRB?

From Politico:

“The Becker nomination offers President Barack Obama a more important opportunity, what he likes to call a teachable moment. […]

But unions are on the verge of vanishing. If the Democrats won’t even go this far to halt the battering unions have been taking, then Democrats and the nation will be the losers. For soon, we won’t have any institutional player to do the heavy lifting, to provide the serious money the Democrats need to campaign for job creation, health care reform and financial regulation. McCain and company have demonized Becker simply because he’s a union lawyer. Obama should stand up to them.

Save Big Labor and your party allies, Mr. President! Make a recess appointment of Craig Becker!

Thanks to the Center for Union Facts for slogging through Forbath’s column. We lost interest with his tired invocation of “the big lie” and “teachable moments.” Is that what passes for argument at the University of Texas?

Finally, we draw your attention to yesterday’s post here at Shopfloor.org on the political PR campaign by the current chairman, Wilma Liebman, undermining the board’s quasi-judicial responsibilities. As the Truth About EFCA blog headlined its own post, “Even Without Becker, Politicizing The NLRB.”

SEIU President Andy Stern spins the result of the Senate election in Massachusetts and says the Democrat defeat was a result of timidity in Washington. He’s whirling in a counterclockwise direction:

The reason Ted Kennedy’s seat is no longer controlled by a Democrat is clear: Washington’s inability to deliver the change voters demanded in November 2008. Make no mistake, political paralysis resulted in electoral failure.
 
During the past year, Republicans refused to do anything but stand in the way of change and Democratic Senators took too long to do too little. And tonight, the Senate bears the consequences for its failure to act decisively but the American people are the ones left paying the price. If our elected officials don’t recognize that every day more working families fall victim to Washington’s failure to act, the elections next November will result in the same.

This is preposterous. To be taken seriously, Stern should acknowledge that the SEIU and other labor unions mobilized their forces on behalf of Coakley. The SEIU ran its own radio spots, TV commercial, and spent $759,000 in a single week in the campaign.

Voters rejected them. From card check to public option, Massachusetts voters rejected organized labor’s policies, and the SEIU and Stern can’t spin that away.

From today’s Financial Times, “Union boss loses patience with US reform delays“:

Andy Stern, the powerful head of the Services Employees International Union, will push US senators for a vote on far-reaching reform of labour laws in “spring”, even if Democrats plead for delay and even if he has to accept a compromise.

Mr Stern, who White House records reveal was the most frequent visitor to Barack Obama in the first months of his presidency, expressed frustration at the time taken on Capitol Hill to pursue the administration’s agenda, which includes a divisive Employee Free Choice Act. [EFCA]

Stern is among a group of top union leaders who meet with President Obama in the White House today to talk about health care and the Senate bill’s excise tax on high-value insurance plans. Amanda Carpenter of The Washington Times tweets a good question: “Unions going to WH today–any possibility of a deal on EFCA in exchange for acceptance of caddy tax?”

Probably not. President Obama has not put serious political muscle behind passing card check, as far as we can tell. Given the current political/electoral dynamics in the Senate — the key EFCA battleground — it’s hard to see him really pushing this horribly unpopular measure. If jobs are the byword of 2010, turning control of more jobs-creating businesses over to labor unions is a definite campaign loser.

Oh, and did you know that Stern is not a registered lobbyist? And isn’t his refusal to register actually an admission of the lack of his influence, despite his many, many visits to the White House?

Addendum: In other SEIU news, the union is a major player in a “week of action” to promote expanded immigration, part of the Reform Immigration FOR America (RI4A) coalition. Odd to see a group representing union workers advocating for an increase in labor supply, pushing down wages for their members…unless the goal of political power takes precedent over representing their members.

The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein blogs that “two sources with knowledge of the situation told HuffPost” that President Obama intends to renominate executive branch and judicial nominees the Senate returned to the White House on Dec. 24. That’s a precise attribution, eh? Not “White House sources” but “sources with knowledge of the situation.” Well, it would hardly come as a surprise for President Obama to stick by the people he thought were worth nominating in the first place.

We’d hope he’d at least reconsider Craig Becker, the SEIU counsel and card check apologist nominated to serve on the National Labor Relations Board. (See our Dec. 27 post.) It’s not as if the SEIU lacks access to the Administration to speak on important policy issues, right?

P.S. Michael Whitney at the lefty blog Firedoglake reports that Becker has been renominated, using Stein’s report as the source. Look again.

Below we note criticism of the White House Forum on Jobs and Economic Growth from two prominent Republicans, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH).

Gingrich and Boehner raise a criticism we’ve seen elsewhere, that the President excluded important employer groups like the Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Independent Business, and the National Association of Manufacturing.

Eh. We’re not inclined to complain. As these posts demonstrate, there were plenty of manufacturers among the 130 attendees and they provided good input. The White House has said in the past it wants to hear from the actual company leaders, the employers in the trenches, and fair enough.

But …

If that’s the theory, then shouldn’t organized labor’s representatives have been the heads of local unions, the men and women dealing with job loss and creation in their home communities? It’s not as if Andy Stern doesn’t have enough opportunity already to talk to White House officials.

Instead …

• Mark Ayers, Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO
• Larry Cohen, Communications Workers of America
• Edward Wytkind, Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO
• Ed Hill, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
• William Hite, United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters
• Leo Gerard, United Steel Workers
• Terry O’Sullivan, Laborers International Union of North America
• James Hoffa, International Brotherhood of Teamsters
• Anna Burger, Change To Win
• Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO
• John Wilhelm, Unite Here
• Joe Hansen, United Food and Commercial Workers
• Andy Stern, Service Employees International Union
• Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers

In reading up on labor, jobs and White House forums this morning, came across the transcript of Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks in Philadelphia, Feb. 27, at the very first meetings of the White House’s Middle Class Task Force:

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I’d like the record to show it’s the first time in my life my Senate colleagues ever stood for me. I really do appreciate that — (laughter) — this was worth the job, worth the trip. (Laughter.)

Ladies and gentleman, thank you for all being here today, and Senators Specter and Casey, and Congressman Fattah and Congressman Brady; Mayor Nutter and the governor will be here, as well; and many luminaries that are here in the audience: I see that Andy Stern of SEIU is out there, and Anna Burger of Change to Win, — (applause) — and as I understand it, that Jerry Sullivan is out there, representing the laborers that are going to get, God-willing and the creek not rising, a significant boost from what we’re about to do.

Stern has been in the political news a lot lately, especially since being cited as the most frequent White House visitor. Two conservative activist groups, Americans for Tax Reform and the Alliance for Worker Freedom, this week called for a federal investigation into lobbying by Stern, who has not registered as a lobbyist. The SEIU connection with ACORN has drawn scrutiny. Then there are the continuing “California Labor Wars,” as the Wall Street Journal describes them.

From The Washington Post, Howard Kurtz, “Anchor Lou Dobbs resigns from CNN“:

Lou Dobbs, the most opinionated and divisive anchor at a cable network that bills itself as a straight-news oasis, resigned from CNN on Wednesday night, saying in his final broadcast that he wants “to go beyond the role” of a television journalist in tackling the country’s problems.

Framing his move as a response to the urging of “some leaders in media, politics and business,” Dobbs struck a populist tone, attempting to position himself as a political leader who would mount a campaign “to overcome the lack of true representation in Washington, D.C.” He said that public debate was now defined by “partisanship and ideology” and that he would continue to speak out “in the most honest and direct language possible.”

The speculation turns to Dobbs running for office. He’s a resident of New Jersey; Sen. Frank Lautenberg was just elected in 2008, and Sen. Robert Menendez is not up until 2012 and thus a Senate race is out.

That leaves President as the only office equal to his self-exaltedness. Indeed, a populist campaign for the top spot seems quite possible, with immigration opponents forming his political base. It could be a third party campaign — see Know Nothing Party, 1856 — or as previously bruited, a campaign as an insurgent Democrat.

Along with immigration, anti-globalization and protectionism have also been Dobbs’ core table-pounding issues. And you know whom he’d appeal to with that? Organized labor, especially those union men and women who object to the labor movement being hijacked by leaders who want to turn labor into just another arm of the activist left. As Stephen Sprueill of National Review notes, “The past three decades have seen unions embrace left-wing positions on everything from affirmative action to gay marriage to the war in Iraq.”

Stern’s obsession with size has embroiled the labor movement in some of the nastiest fights it has ever seen. Old-school union guys like Sal Rosselli, a former Stern lieutenant whose National Union of Healthcare Workers split from SEIU earlier this year in a bitter divorce, told [The New Republic's] Bradford Plumer that “Stern’s drive for growth at all costs” had caused him to ignore what was in the best interest of his members. But Andrew Stern was a liberal before he was a union organizer, just as Obama was a liberal before he was a community organizer. Unions may have existed to serve workers’ interests at one time. These days, they exist to serve liberalism.

Lou Dobbs versus Andy Stern for the heart and soul of the labor movement. May the best man win…a Pyrrhic victory, that is.

The next governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, often criticized the undemocratic Employee Free Choice Act during his campaign against Creigh Deeds, who tried to avoid the issue. (See also Amanda Carpenter, Washington Times, “EFCA’s role in McDonnell’s win.”

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine’s core support came from organized labor, pushing his candidacy at the same time they made the Employee Free Choice Act their rallying cry. See The Star-Ledger story, “Unions organize to help an ally: Jon Corzine.” Former federal prosecutor Chris Christie defeated Corzine on Tuesday, 49-45 percent.

In Pennsylvania, organized labor’s candidate for the state Supreme Court, Jack Panella, lost to Joan Orie Melvin. Judging by Panella’s website, he was counting on the unions to bring home the vote. Nope.

True, labor’s favored candidate won in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, but Bill Owens was the AFL-CIO’s second choice after Dede Scozzafava dropped out.

Labor’s failures weaken its political power in Congress, if only at the margins, making it even more difficult to pass the Employee Free Choice Act this year. The unions will therefore continue their power plays in other venues, such as the National Mediation Board and the National Labor Relations Board. Expect the SEIU’s Andy Stern to make even more visits to the White House to coordinate strategy.

UPDATE (9:45 a.m.): Mickey Kaus, from his “Election 2009: Some Winners, Losers,”:

Losers: Dems who were planning to argue that a Corzine victory, when contrasted with Deeds’ loss, shows the need to stick with “core Democratic values” (i.e. unions) …

Loser: Card check. Virginia Republican McDonnell didn’t fudge on labor’s “card check” bill. He bashed it. He won. Virginia is hardly a union state, but neither are the states with Senators who are swing votes on “card check”. …

From today’s Wall Street Journal, “Unions in Debt,” with the secondary headline, “Big labor has big financial problems it wants to keep quiet.”

‘We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama,” declared Andy Stern last month, and the president of the Service Employees International Union wasn’t exaggerating. The SEIU and AFL-CIO have been spending so much on politics that they’re going deeply into debt.

That news comes courtesy of federal disclosure forms that unions file each year with the Department of Labor. The Bush Administration toughened the enforcement of those disclosure rules, but under pressure from unions the Obama Labor shop is slashing funding for such enforcement. Without such disclosure, workers wouldn’t be able to see how their union chiefs are managing their mandatory dues money.

And an insight:

[Unions] can’t resist the lure of the Beltway precisely because they fare so poorly in the private marketplace. The union red ink helps explain why Mr. Stern and AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney are lobbying so hard for Congress to rig the rules to make it easier for unions to gather more dues-paying members.

Former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao outlined the attacks against disclosure and the Department’s Office of Labor Management Standards in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last month, “Obama Tries to Stop Union Disclosure: No more sunshine on how worker dues are spent.”

Just love Politico’s headline on its story about Sen. Tom Harkin trying to work out some version of the Employee Free Choice Act that will pass muster with recalcitrant, constituent-minded Democratic Senators.

Working Out the Kinks in Card Check

Well, as a matter of fact, in the words of the Kinks’ Ray Davies in “Get Back in Line“:

Facing the world ain’t easy when there isn’t anything going
Standing at the corner waiting watching time go by
Will I go to work today or shall I bide my time
‘Cos when I see that union man walking down the street
He’s the man who decides if I live or I die, if I starve, or I eat
Then he walks up to me and the sun begins to shine
Then he walks right past and I know that I’ve got to get back in the line

On a more serious note, here’s a Los Angeles Times interview with Andy Stern of the SEIU. He sounds almost down on the Senate prospects for the Employee Free Choice Act. He’s also still selling binding arbitration as a must-have provision in any bill. When you make outrageous demands, then yes, prospects for passage do decline.