In the latest of a litany of Big Labor political paybacks, President Barack Obama nominated union lawyer George H. Cohen to Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). 

According to the Peggy Browning Fund’s biography of Cohen, "he joined the National Labor Relations Board in 1960 as an Attorney Advisor for Board Member [Gerald] Brown where he helped shape the progressive, union [boss]… friendly agenda of the ‘Kennedy Board’…  In 1966, George left the Board to begin his 40 year stint as a union-side labor lawyer."

Cohen’s past efforts on behalf of union chiefs clearly indicates that he brings years of forced unionism bias to what is a very coveted position for Big Labor.

Under the mandatory binding arbitration provision in the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill, the FMCS bureaucrats would take over employer/union boss contract negotiations 90 days after a card check forced organizing campaign.  The forced arbitration provision that is triggered at 120 days not only snatches the power of contract negotiations away from the people it actually affects; but it also, as the Wall Street Journal notes, emboldens union bosses "to run out the 120-day clock and let an arbitrator impose a contract that is bound to include much of what unions demand."  The federally-imposed contract would be binding for two years.

If Big Labor’s Card Check Forced Unionism Bill passes, the Cohen-led FMCS would become a defacto rubber stamp for union boss coercion, doing Big Labor’s dirty work during negotiations and empowering them to browbeat employers into forcing more workers into forced-dues-paying union membership.

Obama’s nomination of yet another union hired gun, this time for the vital post of FMCS Director, is just another example in a long list of union stooges who clearly do not have the best interests of independent-minded workers at heart.