Card Check: Inconsistency
Thursday, February 4th, 2010 by adminLaborUnionReport.com looks at comments by Big Labor and their biggest supporter in the Senate, Sen. Tom Harkin and says someone’s got some splainin to do:
As we scan through all of the posts, comments and critiques surrounding
union bosses’President Obama’s controversial nominee to the National Labor Relations Board, the SEIU’s Craig Becker, we could not help but notice some BIG inconsistencies in the comments made by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and the AFL-CIO’s mouthpiece Stewart Acuff.The inconsistencies are over whether or not Craig Becker will can push to use his (possible) position on the NLRB to push for provisions contained in the all-but-dead Employee Free Choice Act.
The SEIU has said that Becker’s nomination is labor’s highest priority now, which was largely explained by a statement by Acuff that Becker could accomplish through the NLRB what labor could not achieve legislatively: namely, card check.
But then there’s this quote from Sen. Harkin:
As you are all aware, I’m a supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act, and I hope to see it passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. But I don’t have any illusions that those important changes can somehow be accomplished administratively, and neither does Craig Becker.
“He has clearly and consistently explained, on numerous occasions, that all three major reforms proposed in EFCA—card check, binding arbitration for first contracts, and treble backpay for illegally fired workers—cannot be accomplished without a change in the statute. And as we all know, statutes can only be amended by those of us elected to Congress, not Executive Branch appointees.”
Who’s right? Who’s … stretching?
Figuring out that is our top priority. Senators should vote NO on Becker for NLRB.
