As we noted earlier this week, President Barack Obama nominated two hard-line union militants to the National Labor Relations Board. Now, President Bush’s inability to properly staff the five-member Board during his eight years in the Oval Office has come home to roost.

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. Circuit ruled that decisions of the NLRB last year (approximately 300 in total) are not valid because only two of the five seats were filled.  In other words, there was no valid quorum, even if the two members agreed how to rule.  (A less influential federal circuit court ruled two member board decision are valid, so the circuit court split may lead to U.S. Supreme Court review)

Either way, the fact that the Board was comprised of a mere two members for such a long time is a testimony to the total incompetence of the Bush Administration in dealing with the agency.

Bill Clinton’s NLRB overturned 1200 years of precedent in an effort to make it easier for union officials to coerce workers into union ranks and misuse their forced dues on political activism.

At first, the Bush administration simply kept intact a Clinton majority on the Board for a full year after taking office. Then the Bushies kept hardened union activists like Clinton holdover Wilma Liebman (who Obama has since named Board chairman) on the Board, while nominating soft and inexperienced Republican appointees.

As a result, the Bush Board was unable to get itself moving to reverse most of the controversial rulings of the activist Clinton Board.

After years of foolish efforts to cozy up to certain union bosses combined with a Keystone Cop-like incompetence with respect their NLRB nomination strategy, Bush and his staff simply gave up trying to fill the Board’s vacancies in mid 2007 and failed to make recess appointments.

The union bosses must be ecstatic about their good fortune. For nearly a decade, a resurgent Big Labor had its way with this Bush Administration.  And now they’ve got one of their own in the White House, and the payback has already begun.

Big Labor knows how important the NLRB is to its forced unionism power over the American workplace and economy.  You can bet the Obama administration will not make similar mistakes.

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.

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Jim Lindgren observes that the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics findings show that heavily unionized states are being hit hardest by the economic downturn. Four of the six states with the highest unemployment rates also lack Right to Work laws, while the six states with the lowest unemployment rates all have Right to Work laws which help improve a region’s economic performance.

This reinforces what we already know: In addition to violating workers’ rights, forced unionism also hurts their economic prospects. No wonder union bosses are so eager to prevent workers from getting all the facts about Big Labor’s agenda during their coercive unionization drives.

Using card check, UAW operatives muscled their way into a plant in Albion, Indiana. The courageous working mom featured below joined with her coworkers to exercise legal rights won by the National Right to Work Foundation to throw the union back out.

Check out the National Right to Work Committee’s latest video on one working mom’s encounter with professional UAW organizers:

Previous Right to Work videos on the UAW’s abusive card check drive in Albion are available here and here.

The new Foundation Action newsletter is now available online. This issue includes articles on Obama’s latest Big Labor giveaways, AT&T employees fighting back against union bosses’ attempts to coerce them into participating in an upcoming AT&T strike, and an op-ed from the Houston Chronicle on the dangers of card check.

Click here (pdf) to read the whole thing. To subscribe to our bi-monthly newsletter free of charge, click here.

Sonoma County grape pickers aren’t the only workers facing prolonged union occupation – an employee decertification election aimed at ejecting International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 from a Northwest Indiana plant has also been repeatedly stalled by frivolous union blocking charges:

Dozens of workers at the Edw. C. Levy Co., a slag processing subcontractor at Mittal Steel’s Burns Harbor plant, are involved in a lengthy and nasty dispute with the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150.

The workers claim Local 150 is purposely delaying their right to an election that could, presumably, rule out the union as their representative. The workers, who voted out Local 150 in 2007, claim that its repeated filing of unfair labor practice complaints is strictly to delay a new election, again presumably to vote in another union.

"All we want is a vote," said Jim Bezler, a Levy Co. mechanic for three years and one of the few workers who would allow me to print his name.

Like the Sonoma grape pickers, workers in Indiana are being punished for an alleged company malfeasance despite the employees’ repeated grassroots campaigns to kick out the unwanted union: 

The Levy Co. workers I spoke with disagree, claiming Local 150 is taking full advantage of the NLRB’s policy by filing charge after charge against the Levy Co.

"They keep pushing back any hope for us to have an election," said Alvin Johnson III, a mechanic from Hebron. "And now they just filed six more charges which could drag this out even longer, possibly to September."

The union bosses, of course, are only interested in retaining their forced dues and monopoly bargaining privileges. Moreover, evidence suggests union operatives have engaged in vandalsm, including actions which could seriously harm independent-minded workers:

Some of the workers also claimed that Local 150 supporters have sabotaged company equipment, such as dumping materials in hydraulic tanks and removing bolts from transmissions.

"I’ve seen the damage first-hand," Bezler said.

Other workers told me their personal property has been vandalized, including slashed tires, allegedly by Local 150 supporters.

While we applaud these workers for stepping forward, many employees don’t have the time or legal expertise to deal to take on union lawyers and union thugs. If you or your coworkers need legal assistance, please contact the National Right to Work Foundation. We provide free aid to workers across the country who have been victimized by compulsory unionism. 

Last month, a California Agricultural Relations Board Administrative Law Judge threw out the result of a 2007 E&J Gallo’s Sonoma County vineyards employees election to oust the United Farm Workers (UFW) union as their monopoly bargaining agent.

The 2007 decertification election was the second time in less than five years the E&J Gallo’s workforce voted to remove the unwanted UFW union from their workplace.  The judge ruled that the company failed to provide an accurate list to the UFW union bosses in the lead up to the election.  Unfortunately, the clear will of the employees and a 30-vote margin was ignored due to the scorned union bosses’ exploitation of an apparent clerical error on the part of the company.

However, the case isn’t over yet.  National Right to Work Foundation attorneys are helping lead petitioner Roberto Parra appeal the judge’s erroneous decision.  Of course, the Foundation will keep you informed on any developments in this case and others on our website and on our Freedom@Work blog.