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Former NLRB Member Craig Becker Appeared on AFL-CIO Conference Stage

September 10, 2013

Former Obama National Labor Relations Board member Craig Becker joined AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka onstage at the labor behemoth's national conference.

Becker was spotted by RedState’s labor watchdog Peter List sitting on stage as Trumka spoke.

"It’s time to stop letting employers and politicians tell us who is a worker and who isn’t, who’s in our movement and who isn’t," he said, according to prepared remarks.

Becker used his NLRB position to give unions a leg up in organizing, departing from longstanding judicial precedent in the process.

He helped issue the ruling allowing the formation of micro-unions. The ruling allowed unions to organize without the approval of a majority of employees by forming individual units within a workplace, such as a retailer’s shoe department. Republicans proposed legislation to ban micro unions in July.

Two federal courts ruled that Obama’s recess appointment of Becker was unconstitutional, calling into question the president’s subsequent recess appointments of board members Sharon Block and Richard Griffin.

The AFL-CIO has shown tremendous influence over the White House’s NLRB appointments. When Obama withdrew Block and Griffin’s re-nominations as part of the nuclear option deal in July, Trumka visited the White House and hand-picked their replacements: former AFL-CIO attorney Nancy Schiffer and NLRB attorney Kent Hirozawa.

Becker, a former Service Employees International Union official, took a post at the AFL-CIO soon after leaving the board in 2012.