The Wall Street Journal slammed Obama recess appointee Craig Becker this week for participating in cases before the National Labor Relations Board involving his former employer, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU):
In his few months at the NLRB, Mr. Becker, former associate general counsel for the Service Employees International Union, has refused to recuse himself from most cases involving his former employer. This despite the fact that Mr. Becker signed the Obama Administration's vaunted ethics pledge, in which he promised to refrain for two years from participating in "any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer."
In true lawyerly fashion, Mr. Becker is now running for the loopholes, arguing that the SEIU proper is a "distinct legal entity" that is different from local SEIU unions. Having liberated himself from that legal barrier, Mr. Becker says he intends to continue judging disputes that feature local SEIU shops. He even convinced the NLRB's inspector general—who was asked to investigate one of the failure-to-recuse cases—to buy the separate legal entity line.
From a technical legal standpoint, SEIU locals may well be distinct from Mr. Becker's former employer. Yet the clear intention of President Obama's ethics pledge was to eliminate obvious political conflicts of interest. The example of a former SEIU lawyer like Mr. Becker sitting in judgment on cases featuring SEIU locals is Conflict 101.
No one understands better than Mr. Becker the deep organizational and financial ties between the SEIU and its locals, having been the attorney who crafted national legal strategies for use by SEIU locals everywhere. NLRB Chairwoman Wilma Liebman (another Obama appointee) has applied a more rigorous and appropriate standard of recusal for herself in cases involving her former employer, the Teamsters.
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which is representing workers in several cases involving SEIU locals, sent a letter Monday requesting that the Department of Justice investigate whether Mr. Becker has violated his pledge. Let's hope Attorney General Eric Holder isn't as cavalier about that request as President Obama was with Mr. Becker's appointment.
Read more about the Foundation's letter to Attorney General Holder.
Comments
Madness! Madness!
Nonsense like this makes me wonder if the author is ignorant or intentionally trying to distort the truth.
1. The case is before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) and at the hearing stage. It has not been appealed from the ALJ by either of the parties.
2. Assuming it is appealed from the ALJ to the Board (say Boeing loses and appeals), it will go to a randomly generated subpanel chooser. So one can't know if Becker is even on the case. The system will 2 of the 3 Dem Board members and Republican Hayes. So even if there is an appeal to the Board, you can't know if Becker will hear it.
3. Obama's ethics pledge isn't inconsistent with and doesn't change existing ethics rules. The rule is simple, you can't work on cases involving former clients. If you worked for one union, you can work on cases involving other unions. If you worked for the International you can work for chapters.
4. The union in the Boeing case is the IAM. Becker worked with SEIU. IAM isn't his client, no conflict. Duh.
5. I worked at NLRB. When you get cases with potential conflicts, we tend to opt out or at least get advice from our ethics counsel. I know of no instance where a Board Member simply bulled ahead and took a conflicted case. It not only risks federal criminal charges but state bard discipline and even disbarrment.
6. So for example, I was on a case in which Liebman (a former Teamster's lawyer) knew or worked with one of the officers of a Teamsers local involved in a Board R case. She recused herself. I think Schaumber recused himself from some case because his wife owned stock in the a company in a case.
7. So let me get this straight, nutcases like Issa, would have Becker ignore the law, the rules, and precedent, and recuse himself because he was a union-side lawyer and the case includes a union? So will all the management side people recuse because their cases involve managment? Who will hear cases then.
8. The rules have a practical angle. Board Members and their counsels are conflicted if cases involve former clients. But the mere fact a union or management is involved (which is true in all cases) doesn't conflict out attorneys or Board Members. Everyone one the Board and their staff counsels has worked for either management or unions at some point. The logic of this article would conflict all of them out.
There are plenty of things to criticize about Obama. But this nonexistent ethics violation - HE ISNT EVEN ON THE CASE - is folly.