On Monday, President Barack Obama announced two nominations – both with extensive backgrounds as Big Labor lawyers – to the National Labor Relations Board, the quasi-judicial body which administers federal labor law.

Craig Becker, one of the nominees, is the Associate General Counsel to both the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Sources indicate he was a key player in Obama’s early executive order aimed at blacklisting non-union contractors and keeping employees in the dark about their right to refrain from supporting union political activities.

Worse, and perhaps more tellingly, Becker wrote in a "labor studies" journal in 1998 that employees should not have to "petition the NLRB" or "cast an affirmative vote simply to establish a ‘representative process’ in the workplace" (see page 15 of this PDF). In other words, Becker has indicated he would be fine with installing a union monopoly even if mere "majority support" had not been established, through either a secret ballot or the more abusive "card check" process.

These appointments are just the latest payoffs by President Obama to Big Labor for spending well over one billion dollars electing him and other pro-forced unionism politicians nationwide in 2008.