President’s Budget Demonstrates Commitment To Forced Unionization, Not Jobs

President’s Budget Demonstrates Commitment To Forced Unionization, Not Jobs
By Katie Gage
2/22/2011

As the nation seriously examines the role of government and the extent to which we should increase the debt as opposed to cutting spending, the President this past week submitted his financial blueprint for the nation in his budget.

Workers and small businesses have been heartened as of late by President Obama’s rhetoric concerning harmful regulations and the impact they have on job creation and economic development.

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal last month, the President wrote “small firms drive growth and create most new jobs in this country. We need to make sure nothing stands in their way.”

Therefore, many expected his budget to reflect this new commitment to small businesses by curtailing burdensome and onerous rules by cutting or not increasing funding to regulatory agencies like the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and National Mediation Board (NMB).

The President’s words were not matched with action. At a time when American families are tightening their belts, the White House's budget actually increased funding to the NLRB and NMB by $4,797,000. In fact, this comes after a $21,276,000 increase last year.

These agencies are not focused on helping small businesses turn around our economy. Instead, they are committed to putting in place policies that hurt job creators and reward Big Labor bosses by eliminating worker rights.

The NLRB has spent its time attempting to enact rules that shorten the election window in union-organizing drives, implement card check, institute electronic voting and create various bargaining units in one workplace, none of which creates a single job and only serve to produce uncertainty for job providers.

And as the NLRB has been leading an assault against employees and employers, the NMB has reversed a rule in place for nearly a century that required a majority of workers to select a collective bargaining unit, and instituted a policy that allows a small minority to determine the fate of an entire workforce.

These highly provocative and damaging actions have been enacted by bureaucrats that are Big Labor’s cronies.

For instance, the NLRB’s Craig Becker is a labor radical and prior to joining the agency, he served as counsel to both the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and Service Employee International Union (SEIU). As has been reported numerous times, both unions' combined contributions in the 2008 presidential election in favor of President Obama totaled hundreds of millions of dollars.

The head of the NLRB, Wilma Liebman, is not much better. She previously worked for the Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen as well as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

At the NMB, is Linda Puchala, the former president of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) and the chair, Harry Hoglander was the executive vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association.

Any notion that these individuals would place laborers before labor leaders is long gone as their actions have been an obvious “payback” to Big Labor bosses.

The national budget debate brings all of this to the forefront as the President increases funding to these agencies, while the U.S. House attempted to de-fund the NLRB. Even though the vote failed, 176 Representatives voted in favor of it. But Congress isn’t done yet, as House Members are attempting to cut $50 million from the NLRB’s budget in order to save the taxpayer not only dollars, but essentially, their livelihoods.

This is not a time for political favors and government waste. It is, as the President said, time to make sure that “nothing stands in [the] way” of small businesses.

It is ludicrous that President Obama proposed a budget with increased funding to the NLRB and NMB when they have done nothing to help businesses, but plenty to hurt them. And now that the House is attempting to reign in this spending and provide a much needed check and balance on these agencies, it is becoming increasingly clear that neither the American worker nor the small business owner has an ally in the White House, which insists on doing the bidding of union bosses.