Republicans and anti-union groups are demanding that a new member of the National Labor Relations Board recuse himself from cases involving chapters of the union he used to work for, a continuation of the fight that surrounded his nomination, the Washington Post reports.
The National Right to Work Foundation sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. last week, requesting an investigation into Craig Becker's decision to hear cases involving local chapters of the Service Employees International Union. Becker worked as an associate general counsel for the 1.8 million-member union and the AFL-CIO before his appointment by President Obama in March.
In a footnote to a June ruling, Becker stated that in keeping with the Obama administration's ethics policy, he would recuse himself from any cases in which the SEIU or the AFL-CIO was a party. But he would not recuse himself from cases involving an SEIU chapter, because the SEIU is a "separate and distinct legal entity" from its affiliated locals.
This did not satisfy Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who noted that most cases arise from locals and that the national union collects dues from them.
"There's clear reason to question Becker's impartiality," said Issa spokesman Frederick Hill. "His former employer, SEIU International, tightly controls its local chapters. With such gaping loopholes, the Obama administration's ethics pledge Becker signed isn't worth the paper it was printed on."
Issa requested an investigation by the labor board's inspector general, who responded by affirming Becker's interpretation. A Justice Department spokesman said there is no response yet to last week's letter.
The recusal dispute follows an intense fight over Becker's 2009 nomination. Republicans cast him as an extreme pro-union partisan, and, with the help of several Democrats, blocked his nomination from getting a filibuster-proof 60 Senate votes.
After pressure from organized labor, Obama seated Becker in a recess appointment. The five-member board is now swamped with work as it tries to process the roughly 100 cases that were bounced back to it recently when the Supreme Court invalidated the rulings made by the board when it had only two members.
Becker's "political opponents have latched onto this issue," said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at the University of California at Berkeley. "It's about the politics of the appointment rather than the substance of the argument."
Also voicing concerns, though, have been the former leaders of a 150,000-person SEIU chapter in Northern California that broke away to form its own union last year and is now engaged in a battle to reclaim its former members. Leaders say that the distinction between the SEIU and its chapters is blurred when the national union takes control of a chapter, as occurred in their case.
Becker has anticipated this argument: In a June memo that elaborated on his recusals, he included the California dispute as an issue he would recuse himself from. But he said his recusals would apply only to disputes from the California fight that arose before his joining the board in March. Depending on the interpretation, this might allow him to rule on disputes that are likely to arise in the future, with a showdown election over 45,000 Kaiser Permanente workers approaching next month.
"It's an artificial construct," said John Borsos, one of the breakaway union leaders. "Either one is enmeshed in these issues or one is not.."
Becker's June memo also stated that he would recuse himself from cases where the in-house counsel for the SEIU or the AFL-CIO were representing a party; from cases where one of the four union locals that he also worked for were a party; and from any cases in which he appeared as a counsel or signed a friend-of-the-court brief.
The memo identified three cases that he was already recusing himself from, and there are five others or so on the docket that meet his definition, mainly because they stem from the California fight. But there are 39 others, out of a total of 368, that involve the SEIU and that he could rule on under his standard.
SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette dismissed the recusal dispute. "It's another way the right wing is trying to politicize something," she said. Stanford University labor expert Nelson Lichtenstein called the uproar contrived. Obama picked Becker, a pro-labor voice on the board, just as Republican presidents nominate pro-business members. The recusal demand is just a way to reduce Becker's influence, he said.
"It would neuter him," Lichtenstein said.
(This item appeared in the Washington Post Aug. 17, 2010.)
