Confirmation of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board
WASHINGTON, DC – Change to Win chair Anna Burger issued the following statement regarding yesterday’s failure of the U.S. Senate to debate theconfirmation of Craig Becker to a seat on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
"We are deeply disappointed that the U.S. Senate failed to allow debate and a vote on Craig Becker, who was nominated in April 2009, to serve onthe NLRB Board.
"Craig Becker is a highly qualified candidate, with decades of experience as a labor attorney who is known as a bridge builder between the labor, corporate, and academic worlds. He earned labor’s unified support because he and a majority of the Senate recognize that he willbring excellence and fair judgment to bear on decisions impacting thousands of American workers each year.
"The Senate’s failure to support a full and vigorous debate of his confirmation, despite his majority support out of the Health, Education,and Labor Committee, and after being nominated over nine months ago to fill an urgently needed, essential seat at the National Labor Relations Board, is just another example of American workers being denied and ignored at the whim of small-minded politics on the part of the Republican party and two Democrats.
"Thousands of cases, of hard-working Americans who play by the rules and deserve justice and resolution to disputes on their job, will continue to go unsettled, at a moment when our economic crisis cries out for responsible, constructive solutions from our legislative branch. Instead, the actions of the Republican Senators and Senators Nelson and Lincoln serve to deny workers with a functional governing body to address our most basic workplace laws.
"American workers are in crisis — facing job losses and insecurity, an unsustainable health care system that leaves tens of millions without adequate coverage and care, and a global economy that challenges the standards and conditions and outcomes that generations have fought to create, which serve as the core of our treasured American Dream. What happened to workers in the Senate today is what happens to them all too often on their jobs — they are denied the most basic elements of democracy, and the debate and opportunity to choose a new and better direction, because the leaders of the Republican party and two misguided Democrats continue to follow the pressures and dictates of the same Chamber of Commerce crowd that brought us to this economic and socialcrisis in the first place.
"Change to Win joins with all of labor and responsible business and policy leaders in agreement that Craig Becker is the strongest and best candidate for this position. We stand together in a continued to call for Becker to fill this important position at NLRB, so that we can restore the credibility and functioning of that body to serve our nation’s working people."
About Change to Win Change to Win is a 5.5-million member partnership of five unions founded in 2005 to represent workers in the industriesand occupations of the 21st century economy. Change to Win is committed to restoring the American Dream for a new generation of workers -wages that can support a family, affordable health care, a secure retirement, and the opportunity for the future. The affiliated unions are: ServiceEmployees International Union, United Food and Commercial Workers
International Union, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Laborers’ International Union of North America, and United Farm Workers of America.