Trevor Loudon
New Zeal
12/31/2010
The best way to keep abreast of the Obama Administration’s latest moves is to read the Communist Party USA newszine Peoples World.
Peoples World labor editor John Wojcik has kindly informed us of new Administration moves to strengthen labor unions.
Private employers will be required to post large signs informing workers about their right to form unions under a new rule the Obama administration plans to institute by executive order.
The plan received less than the amount of publicity that might have been expected because it was announced the week before Christmas when the main focus of the news was on the legislative battles in Congress.
The National Labor Relations Board plans to issue a rule requiring almost all employers to post notices in employee break rooms or other prominent spots that explain workers’ rights to bargain collectively, distribute union literature or engage in other union activity without reprisal.
In the past the NLRB usually made policy on a case-by-case basis during labor-management disputes.
The decision to issue the new order steps up even further the more aggressively pro-labor role the board has played during the Obama administration.
The president first signaled his determination to strengthen the board’s role in protecting organizing rights when he made several recess appointments to give the NLRB its first Democratic majority in ten years.
The recess appointments were made because because the presiden’t candidates were held up for months over GOP claims that a former AFL-CIO lawyer, Craig Becker, would be too pro-union.
The administration’s new rule is opposed by big business which sees it as an attempt to achieve, by executive order, some of what labor and its allies have not been able to achieve on the legislative front. Republican filibusters have blocked passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier to form unions. The EFCA would allow workers to form a union as soon as a majority sign cards expressing their desire to be in a union…
The article continues at New Zeal.
Related: Michelle Malkin, Another reckless recess appointment
The most open, transparent administration ever is ending the year by ramming through another controversial appointment under holiday cover.
Introducing recess DOJ appointee James Cole, now deputy attorney general overseeing national security:
President Obama used a recess appointment Wednesday to name James Cole as deputy attorney general.
…Cole’s nomination to the second-ranking post at the Department of Justice had been held up over objections from Republicans, who raised concerns over his tenure as an independent monitor of insurance giant AIG between 2005 and 2009. The federal government bailed out the company in 2008.
Republican senators also quibbled with a 2002 report that Cole wrote advocating civilian trials for terror suspects. Republicans have objected to trials in civilian courts for any of the detainees held in Guantanamo Bay as well as others accused of acts of terror…
GOP Rep. Peter King blasted the move in a press release sent out this morning…
Also, at AOL News, Obama Bypasses Senate to Name New Envoys
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has bypassed the Senate and directly appointed four new U.S. ambassadors whose nominations had been stalled or blocked by lawmakers for months.
The White House announced Wednesday that Obama would use his power to make recess appointments to fill envoy posts to Azerbaijan, Syria and NATO allies Turkey and the Czech Republic. Recess appointments are made when the Senate is not in session and last only until the end of the next session of Congress. They are frequently used when Senate confirmation is not possible.
Specific senators had blocked or refused to consider the confirmations of the nominees for various reasons, including questions about their qualifications. But in the most high-profile case, that of the new envoy to Syria, Robert Ford, a number of senators objected because they believed sending an ambassador to the country would reward it for bad behavior…
