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On Tuesday, the AFL-CIO announced that former NLRB member Craig Becker is set to become co-general counsel of the labor federation. He will join AFL-CIO General Counsel  in leading the labor group’s legal team.

“The strengths of these two extraordinary lawyers, Becker and Rhinehart, are a perfect complement, and together they will lead a powerhouse legal program,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

The notification hardly came as a surprise to business groups, who opposed Becker’s recess appointment to the NLRB. They accused him of “being a union radical who wouldn’t fairly serve the interests of employers.”

Senators from both sides of the isle opposed his nomination “because they feared he would swing the board too much in favor of unions.”

Brett McMahon, President of Miller and Long DC, recently wrote that the move was a “reminder that Senator Orrin Hatch was right to grill Becker when President Obama nominated him to serve on the NLRB and that Hatch’s Senate colleagues were right to reject his nomination.”

Prior to his tenure on the NLRB, Becker worked for both the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union. His return to the AFL-CIO strengthened the concerns among many that the Board has become overly politicized and used as a tool for labor.

The National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) legal efforts to derail The Boeing Company from opening a new production plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state, prompted 41 Republican senators to retaliate against President Obama and his pro-union NLRB. The senators wrote in a letter to Obama last Thursday that they’d “use all procedural tools available to defeat” the confirmations of two board members unless he withdrew their nominations immediately.

Specifically, the senators vowed to oppose the nominations of the board’s Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon and board member Craig Becker, a former attorney who has represented both the AFL-CIO and Service Workers International Union (SEIU), who we’ve written about before.

For a hint at just how frustrated the 41 senators are, here’s a bit more of the letter sent by them to President Obama:

The Senate has been unacceptably denied the ability to exercise its constitutional duty of advice and consent in regards to the NLRB.

In light of the NLRB’s recent actions that would have a deleterious effect on job creation and economic opportunity across the country, it is time to hold the NLRB accountable.

We urge you to withdraw both Mr. Solomon’s and Mr. Becker’s nominations to their respective positions immediately.

If not, we will vigorously oppose both nominations, vote against cloture and use all procedural tools available to defeat their confirmation in the Senate. …

Is this move against Boeing what President Obama meant when he told the AFL-CIO in August 2010 that he was going to “restore some balance” to the NLRB and make it easier for workers in the aerospace industry to unionize? It certainly seems that way.

Image courtesy of: vgm8383

You might have thought President Obama intended to be conciliatory after his fairly moderate State of the Union Address. Think again. This morning the president fired the first shot in the this year’s inevitable partisan battle over labor unions:

Craig Becker, a Democrat on the U.S. National Labor Relations Board who has been criticised by business groups for his ties to unions, was re-nominated by President Barack Obama to serve until 2014.

Becker, a lawyer who represented the AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union, was appointed in March by Obama after the U.S. Senate failed to confirm his nomination. Republicans and some Democrats sought to block Becker after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups objected to his academic writings proposing that unions get more power.

The appointment, made during a Senate recess, is set to expire this year and a fresh nomination was required. If confirmed, Becker would serve on the board, which handles disputes between unions and companies, until December 2014.

But a fresh nomination wasn’t required. Becker is a political hot potato whose nomination Republicans fiercely (and successfully) battled. His notoriety stems primarily from an article in the Minnesota Law Review where he essentially argued that employers should be shut out of the unionization elections completely.

In that sense, Becker is a perfect fit for Obama’s vision of the NLRB, which has been discussing limiting employers’ role over their own workers with everything from quickie elections to enforcing a back door card check. Unions believe that if they exclude employers from the unionization process, they can convince far more workers to unionize and ensure their survival. Becker on the NLRB is Obama’s way of giving them a leg up.

Welcome home, Mr. Becker.