Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has written to Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) of the Senate Health, Labor, Education, and Pensions Committee requesting a hearing on the nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. “I strongly urge you …” is the phrase.

McCain, who serves on the HELP Committee, notes his previous objection in 2009 to the Chairman’s decision to move Becker’s nomination without a hearing. The Senate returned Becker’s nomination at the end of 2009 to the White House, which renominated him on Jan. 20.

From Sen. McCain’s letter: [Wed: Link fixed]

With the new opportunity afforded to us by Mr. Becker’s nomination being resubmitted to the Senate, it is critical that we conduct a full committee hearing on this important nomination.

The NLRB is a bipartisan body that has the crucial task of overseeing, in a balanced fashion, our nation’s workplace laws government by the National Labor Relations Act. The NLRB supervises union organization campaigns and addresses unfair labor practices by unions and employers. Through its rulings and activities the NLRB, in essence, forms the nation’s labor-management relations policy for employers and unions.

As you know, Mr. Becker has a long career of writings and activities that suggest his views concerning labor-management relations are far outside the mainstream in America. As such, I have serious questions about whether Mr. Becker has the ability to fairly consider important cases that come before the NLRB.

So does the National Association of Manufacturers.

Becker, an assistant counsel to the SEIU and AFL-CIO, is the unions’ candidate for creating a labor-backed majority on the NLRB, with the possible goal of implementing the anti-democratic Employee Free Choice Act administratively. As the leftwing The Nation recently argued, “Should Obama persevere and see his nominations confirmed, there is reason to believe that much of what organized labor hopes to accomplish via EFCA will be realized through the rule-making power of the NLRB.”

Thus, the political left and labor are counting on Becker to enact policy changes that in the American political system are the province of the policymaking branch of government, Congress. All the more reason for the policymaking branch of government to question Becker in person, on the record, at a HELP Committee hearing.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is scheduled to vote today on President Obama’s nomination of David Michaels to be Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA). Despite Michaels’ controversial writings on science, litigaton and the Second Amendment, Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) did not schedule a committee hearing on his nomination allowing for a public exploration of his views.

The business meeting starts at 10 a.m.

For previous posts on Michaels, go here.

UPDATE (10:10 a.m.): The first item on the committee’s schedule is mark-up of S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. Sen. Harkin says he hopes to work through the bill by noon.

UPDATE (11:13 a.m.): With no discussion, the Committee passes out the nomination of Michaels to the Senate floor. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) voted no.

UPDATE (3:15 p.m.): Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute revisits the many red flags in Michaels’ record. On the other hand, the American Public Health Association hails the committee action and urges quick confirmation by the full Senate.

From USA Today, “Harkin: Senate health care debate will begin ‘in earnest’ Nov. 30“:

Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate health committee, told The Bill Press Show this morning that the health care debate “will start in earnest” Nov. 30, the Monday after Thanksgiving.

A vote to allow the debate to start likely will take place this Friday, but it won’t be until after Thanksgiving that the Senate will entertain amendments, he said.

“That’s when it will all begin,” he said of Nov. 30.

Assuming the primary motivation is to postpone the health care discussion into December so as to avoid overuse of the term “this turkey.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Foundry blog today reprises the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report from Friday on the House-passed bill, finding it “A Deathblow for Obamacare.” (Not a term we use.)

Fox News reports on the growing opposition to the nomination of Craig Becker, union attorney, to the National Labor Relations Board, “McCain Puts Hold on Senate Confirmation of Obama’s Labor Board Nominee“:

[McCain] and a slew of business groups are raising questions over articles and academic journals written by Becker on the very labor law he would work to interpret if confirmed to the board. Critics say Becker’s writings reflect views that support restricting employers’ free speech rights and limiting the ability of employers to converse with their employees during union representation campaigns.

“Mr. Becker is on the record supporting suppression of employer free speech,” McCain spokeswoman Brook Buchanan said in an interview with Foxnews.com on Thursday. Buchanan said McCain is calling for an on-the-record hearing to “give Mr. Becker the opportunity to clarify some of these views and opinions.”

Before the Senate HELP Committee markup session Wednesday, in which Becker was voted out by a 15-8 vote, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) released a statement requesting a full hearing on his nomination and calling Becker, “the most radical nominee to the NLRB in my experience in the Senate.”

Senator Hatch offers a substantive critique, including many direct citations of Becker’s writing. He concludes:

[Knowing] what I read from Mr. Becker’s own writings about his views on labor law and the NLRB, and based upon his written responses to the questions that I and others on this Committee submitted to him about those views, as well as his conduct in drafting the President’s labor Executive Orders while employed by the SEIU to benefit his employer, which is directly contrary to the President’s promise not to allow such conduct on his Transition Teams, I’m afraid that I cannot support his nomination for a five-year term on the NLRB.

For the sake of completeness, here’s Chairman Tom Harkin’s statement on the nominees considered Wednesday.

Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), now chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, spoke to the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh today via a video message recorded last week. In bucking up the labor activists about the Employee Free Choice Act, he adopted their broad and hostile lines of attack against the employer community.

Full audio here. Excerpts:

So my brothers and sisters, when 60 percent of workers want to join a union, but only 7 percent are in one, something is badly broken. It’s time to restore one of our most basic rights as Americans – the right to form a union without harassment, obstruction or intimidation. And to that end, I’m proud to lead the fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

For years, the most brazen union-busting tactics have been tolerated or punished with a slap on the wrist. Even when employees succeed in forming a union, half the time employers simply refuse to negotiate a first contract in good faith.

Well, I got a question. Why should people have to crawl across broken glass and go through some kind of boot-camp hell in order to join a perfectly legal organization?

So here’s the bottom line. I’m workin’ hard, I’m meeting with senators who have reservations on the bill, I’ve been working very closely with John Sweeney and others crafting bill to get EFCA through this year. Now, any final legislation will be true to three core principles: One, giving workers real freedom to choose a union; secondly, ensuring workers who organize will definitely get a first contract; and providing meaningful penalties for repeated violations of workers rights.

He concluded, “So I would just close with this: Can we pass the Employee Free Choice Act? Well, with your help and hard work, I’ve got a third-word answer to that question: Yes we can.”

The reality is that the Employee Free Choice Act would force employees into unions against their wills, and the law would let government-appointed arbitrators impose terms of a contract on employees and employers alike.

It’s just a naked power grab by labor unions who cannot win the arguments on the merits. The word “brazen” comes to mind.

Today Senator Harkin talked to a gathering of union activists about labor’s No. 1 priority, the Employee Free Choice Act:

As of July, I can tell you this openly and I know the press is all here but we had worked out a pretty good agreement. Labor was at the table.

However on July 29th the Senator claimed:

I think we’re 80 [percent] to 90 percent there,” Harkin said, without detailing what is keeping the sides from agreement.

Harkin has set several moving targets for action on the EFCA, as we’ve noted here previously.

From The Examiner, today: “Kate Cyrul, a spokesman for Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the measure’s lead sponsor in the upper chamber, told The Examiner that negotiations continue in search of a compromise that can gain 60 votes in Senate.”

And from Congress Daily, yesterday, “Harkin and other senators and aides involved in discussions on the union organizing bill said the group has not met in two weeks and has no plans to talk again before the August recess.”

From The Hill, “Dems warn Baucus with gavel threat“:

In an apparent warning to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), some liberal Democrats have suggested a secret-ballot vote every two years on whether or not to strip committee chairmen of their gavels.

Baucus, who is more conservative than most of the Democratic Conference, has frustrated many of his liberal colleagues by negotiating for weeks with Republicans over healthcare reform without producing a bill or even much detail about the policies he is considering.

“Every two years the caucus could have a secret ballot on whether a chairman should continue, yes or no,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “If the ‘no’s win, [the chairman’s] out.

“I’ve heard it talked about before,” he added.

Senator Harkin is the chief Senate carrier of the Employee Free Choice Act, which eliminates secret ballots in the workplace during union representation elections.

In other speculation-rife speculation, here’s more speculation about Senate Majority Reid’s plans for the legislation. From The Examiner, “Reid plan could force Card Check without compromise.” Reporter Kevin Mooney cites the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace — in which the National Association for Manufacturers is an active member — reacting to the casually sourced Roll Call article about the possibility of union-legislation being “railroaded” through the Senate.

“Forced card check coupled with the job-killing binding interest arbitration provision suggests that the EFCA still remains politically toxic, despite efforts to produce what appears to be a one-sided ‘compromise,’ ” said Brian Worth, chairman of the CDW. “Apparently ‘compromise’ means whatever Big Labor can get passed notwithstanding their ultimate plan for denying workers secret ballots.”

We tend to think an attempt to shove the Employee Free Choice Act through the Senate in a brutal power play would be even more politically toxic. So the Roll Call story was yet another trial balloon from labor, trying to identify some strategy that might work.

We hear today that Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) who is managing the Employee FORCED Choice Act in the Senate for its lead sponsor Sen. Kennedy (D-MA) has acknowledged that there is still not enough support for the bill in the Senate.

According to CQ, the Senator now expects to hold a vote in September or October when Sen. Kennedy is expected to return to the Senate. Where have heard this before?

First he said that there would be a vote in June:

We’re trying to get the necessary compromises made to get this through,” Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said today. But if a compromise cannot be found, “it is my intent that we will put the original bill on the floor and make people vote on it,” Harkin said. He added that any compromise would likely bypass the committee process and go straight to the floor, hopefully in June.

-CongressDaily May 19th

Then he said that he hoped to hold a vote in July:

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) indicated Wednesday that he will be ready to bring up the long-stalled Employee Free Choice Act next month, following weeks of negotiations with key stakeholders.
-Roll Call, June 10th

But now he says that the vote will be in September or October?

No matter how long the vote is postponed, it’s going to be hard to persuade 60 Senators to support a proposal that could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. Even thought a recent New York Times story claimed that a “deal” on a variant of the bill was in reach, Senators – or at least the voters – recognize that the premise behind EFCA is bad for the economy, no matter what shape an alternative bill takes.

From The Des Moines Register, Philip Brasher:

Washington, D.C. – Sen. Tom Harkin said he wants Congress to use a climate bill to force auto companies to make new cars and trucks capable of running on 85 percent ethanol as well as conventional gasoline.

“We own the automobile companies. Why not? I think that will be an easy one,” Harkin said Thursday, referring to the government interests in Chrysler and General Motors.

 (Hat tip: Michael Franc)