“We’re here today because we’ve been bargaining since November 1, 2011,” explained Skye Frome, a registered nurse, at the time. ”And while we’ve made some progress, we have yet to see our most serious concerns addressed in any meaningful way. We’re here to show management that we’re serious about reaching a fair contract.”

In an ironic twist, the SEIU’s international executive vice president, Kirk Adams, is married to Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Neither group responded to The Daily Caller’s request for comment.

Business groups have complained the posters are an unfair government effort to promote union organizing. The labor board contends the posters help workers more clearly understand their rights and protections under federal labor law.
National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons called the appeals court’s injunction “a positive step in overturning this harmful rule.”
“The ‘posting requirement’ is an unprecedented attempt by the board to assert power and authority it does not possess,” Timmons said.
NLRB spokeswoman Nancy Cleeland did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The NLRB rule requires more than 6 million businesses to post an 11-by-17-inch notice in a prominent location explaining the right of workers to join a union and bargain collectively to improve wages and working conditions. The posters also explain that workers have a right not to join a union and that it is illegal for union officials to coerce employees into unionizing.
Similar government posters explaining federal anti-discrimination laws and workplace safety rules are already fixtures in company break rooms. But U.S. District Judge David Norton, in his ruling last Friday in South Carolina, said federal laws specifically allow government agencies to require the display of those posters at work sites. By contrast, Norton said, the National Labor Relations Act contains no such language.
NLRB attorneys argued the board has the authority to require posters even without specific congressional approval.

Norton’s ruling contradicts another decision by a federal court last month. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the NLRB was within its legal authority to issue the poster rule.

NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce has said the notice rule will help workers to know their rights and protections under labor law.

The Chamber celebrated Norton’s ruling against the regulation.

“The court noted that nothing in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) ‘even mentions the issue of notice posting’ (emphasis added) — much less compels or even permits the NLRB to issue such a rule. The decision is an important reminder that federal agencies can’t ignore the law in order to further partisan agendas,” said Randy Johnson, the Chamber’s senior vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits, in a blog post.

A NLRB spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to

Huh. So the Democrats’ top leader appears to be taking money from a guy who profited from preventing what union organizers say is the right of people to advocate for a better life and a living wage. But it’s not like Obama has sidled up to unions at every chance. The Democrats convention will be held in Charlotte, N.C., a city with not a single union hotel. And labor wasn’t pleased about that last year.
But then last month, Obama spoke to the United Auto Workers and sounded like a union organizer, of sorts, when he bashed Republicans.
“Since when are hard-wokring men and women… a special interest?” Obama asked. “Since when is the idea that we look out for one another a bad thing? My friend Ted Kenedy used to say, ‘What is it about working men and women they find so offensive?’”
Perhaps he’ll ask the same thing of Tookes over his $10,000 lunch

Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2012/04/is-obamas-10kplate-fundraiser-a-union-buster.html#storylink=cpy

At the VW plant, older workers are more supportive of the union than younger employees are. Some younger workers fear they could lose some of their current benefits if the union negotiates a contract with Volkswagen.

One of those benefits is a popular vehicle leasing plan through which workers can get a new Volkswagen or Audi vehicle every six months and finance it via payroll deductions.

Volkswagen announced in July 2008 that it would spend more than $1 billion to build the Chattanooga plant, which began building the new American-only version of the Passat midsize sedan in April 2011.

Sales have been so robust that Volkswagen announced March 22 that it would begin hiring an additional 800 workers and open a third shift to meet consumer demand.

UAW President Bob King has said the union’s goal is to organize at least one of the South’s foreign auto plants within the next couple of years, with hopes of expanding to others if the first union drive is successful.

Industry experts say the UAW’s survival is at stake, as its membership has dropped to only 390,000 nationwide from 1.5 million in 1979.

Volkswagen, based in Wolfsburg, Germany, has 62 production facilities worldwide, and Chattanooga is the only one that isn’t unionized.

If Volkswagen workers go union, it would be a first among the foreign-based automakers that have built operations in the South, starting with Nissan in Smyrna in 1983.

Other nonunion, foreign-owned plants are operated by Japanese automakers Nissan in Mississippi; Toyota in Kentucky, Alabama, Texas and Mississippi; and Honda in Alabama; German automakers Mercedes-Benz in Alabama and BMW in South Carolina; and South Korea’s Hyundai and Kia in Alabama and Georgia.

The UAW failed in two efforts at organizing Nissan’s Smyrna facility in 1989 and 2001. Unionization drives also have failed at other plants, including the Mercedes-Benz factory near Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Despite parent Tesco’s overall profitability, the Fresh & Easy move into the United States’ West Coast market coincided with the global economic downturn and has yet to bear fruit. The company is hoping to show a profit from its U.S. operations for the first time in 2012 or 2013.

Trumka urged the convention’s attendees, who represent the leaders of unions around the state, to register at least 20 percent of their unregistered members and to commit to a full-court two-week intensive push prior to the November election.

Pennsylvania “is a must-win state for President Obama on his path to the White House,” said Christopher Borick, director of Muhlenberg College’s Institute of Public Opinion in Allentown. The Republicans can lose Pennsylvania, he said, and still win the White House, but the Democrats need Pennsylvania and unions are key to that party’s success.

“They provide the structure and the personnel” for get-out-the-vote efforts, he said.

Pennsylvania has the fourth largest number of union members, 779,000, according to the U.S. Labor Department and with 14. 6 percent of its workers belonging to unions, it ranks above the national average of 11.4 percent for union membership.

U.S Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), facing re-election, will speak on Wednesday and Patrick Gaspard, executive director of the Democratic National Committee, will address the group on Thursday.

Earlier in the day Thursday, delegates will turn their attention away from politics to hear about organizing new industries from Mark Kamlet, provost at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University and Jane Oates, assistant secretary of the U.S. Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration.

Yet aside from the demonstrators’ appalling lack of grasp of policy issues and basic finance, their 24/7 campouts were not quite as spontaneous as they looked. Political movements by nature require a tight network of leaders in order to press claims and win concessions. As successful business management requires organization, so does successful opposition to it. No doubt the occupiers were having fun. But some of them also were forging ties with seasoned activists on the Left to develop a long-range political program. Labor organizations were ideally positioned to provide moral and logistical support. And quite a few did. [2] In Chicago, Boston and Orange County (Calif.), for example, area affiliates of the AFL-CIO organized protests. In New York City, the national leadership of the Amalgamated Transit Union, the Communications Workers of America, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) each voiced support for Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. So did the New York State United Teachers, another AFL-CIO affiliate.

The encampments of last fall that stood as symbols of mass resistance have been dismantled. In most cases, demonstrators/campers, facing cold weather and growing weary of moral theater, left on their own accord. In other cases, such as Washington, D.C., Oakland and Portland (Oregon), not to mention Ground Zero at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, they didn’t. Authorities belatedly removed makeshift shelters, arresting those who refused to leave. Resistance at times got ugly. In Oakland, California about 400 protestors were arrested [3] during a late-January riot in conjunction with a march on City Hall that resulted in massive vandalism to the building.

With or without a rerun, however, there is a more significant story. More than simply make headlines, the occupations provided the cause of progressivism with fresh cadres of organizers and leaders. Various demonstrators have recognized a career opportunity. Some one day may become national activists of the first rank. It’s happened before. In October 1969, for instance, a young radical activist, Wade Rathke, underwent a baptism of fire when he was arrested for leading a violent demonstration at a local welfare office in Springfield, Massachusetts. The following year, on assignment for the National Welfare Rights Organization, he moved to Little Rock, Arkansas to set up what would become the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, for which he served as chief organizer until 2008. From such battlefields, union and political leaders are born.

Organized labor, with decades of experience in political activism, is taking the most committed of the ‘Occupy’ radicals under their wings. One union in particular, the Service Employees International Union, has emerged as a leader. The SEIU, as National Legal and Policy Center has noted more than once, for the past few decades has been a major voice for radicalism, both in the context of labor relations and Democratic Party politics. During the Eighties, Wade Rathke established SEIU Local 100 to represent service employees in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas; the union and ACORN (now disbanded) were barely distinguishable. And in the middle of that decade, the union created its “Justice for Janitors” campaign, which over the ensuing years has inflicted its highly disruptive style [4] upon cities across the nation. One of the chief architects of Justice for Janitors, Stephen Lerner, remains a major SEIU organizer and political strategist. He was a crucial, and shadowy, figure in last fall’s urban occupations, especially in Chicago. A half-year earlier, Lerner was caught on tape speaking to a New York audience, describing the rudiments of a program to undermine the U.S. economy.

Union leadership has been fully supportive of the Occupy Wall Street movement. SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, the successor to the equally radical Andrew Stern, last October called the protestors an “incredible inspiration [5]” for highlighting social and economic injustice. “We have been talking about the increasing inequality in this country for a long time,” she said. “I think what’s wonderful about the Occupy movement is that they captured this with…‘We are the 99 percent.’ I feel like what we are doing is echoing a very smart thing that the occupiers began with.” She would amplify this endorsement in a guest editorial [6] for the October 8-9, 2011 weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal:
The Occupy Wall Street actions are a potent example of what is happening across our country as the anger and frustration of ordinary Americans builds. While the media and pundits obsess over what the Occupy Wall Street protestors want, the protestors have already succeeded in shaking our conscience as a nation and forcing a national conversation about everything that is wrong with our economy…
The anger of the American people has been brewing for quite some time, and now that it’s boiled over there’s no bottling it up. The importance of Occupy Wall Street can’t be measured by any set of demands. What’s more important to understand are the values that unite the protestors and their authentic understanding of what has gone wrong in our economy.

Her union, which has more than two million members and an annual budget of more than $200 million, is partnering with many of the occupiers. Reporter Richard Pollock, in separate articles for the March 5 [7] and March 8 [8] editions of The Daily Caller, investigated how the SEIU setting up a national network of nonprofit groups to work in concert with “Occupy” groups to pressure businesses and elected officials. These operations, designed to create the illusion of mass public support, advance the interests of the SEIU without being open about it. It is thus more than a tad hypocritical that such people are the first to demand more transparency from the financial industry.

The local groups look spontaneous, traveling under names with an appeal to average citizens who merely want to make a positive difference in their communities. Examples: “Good Jobs, Great Houston”; “Good Jobs, Better Baltimore”; “One Pittsburgh”; “Fight for Philly”; and “Minnesotans for a Fair Economy.” Nobody could be “against” good jobs - that’s why they are such useful fronts. Pollock cited a Seattle group, “Working Washington” as an example. This group is registered with the State of Washington as a corporation, with one Secky Fascione as its agent. Fascione’s LinkedIn profile lists her as an “Organizing Coordinator at SEIU.” Then there is cited the case of the Los Angeles-based “Good Jobs LA.” Its legal name is “Good Jobs, Safe Communities LA.” The California state registry lists its address as the same as the SEIU’s state headquarters.

A Washington, D.C.-area group, Our DC [9], takes this disingenuous mode of behavior to an extreme. Incorporation papers reveal its legal address to be not in the District of Columbia, as its name suggests, but in suburban Gaithersburg, Md. Its address is the same as SEIU Local 500. And its website, while not providing the names of directors or officers, does provide the street address of SEIU national headquarters. Pollock went ahead and obtained documents pertaining to the group’s April 2011 incorporation, discovering that its three-member board of David Rodich, Valarie Long and Beth Myers were anything but amateurs. Rodich and Myers are well-compensated salaried employees of SEIU Local 500; Rodich, in fact, serves as executive director. Long, meanwhile, is executive vice president of the Service Employees and formerly had headed the New York City-based SEIU 32BJ, which represents more than 120,000 janitors, doormen, security guards and other building service workers along the East Coast. The executive director for Our DC, Kendall Fells, is also an SEIU employee. The dots have a way of connecting.
Website registrations provide further evidence of SEIU sleight of hand. Many domain names for group websites originally were registered through an anonymous proxy service. Yet it is hardly a coincidence, notes website integrity consultant RobTex.com, that their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses link back to the main SEIU Web server. The principal IP location of the server reveals nearly 70 domains representing union and allied advocacy groups. All sites corresponding to city-specific SEIU front groups are on the server; many of them use similar designs and an identical template.

Another strong clue that these nonprofits are Service Employees hobby horses is how they obtained their legal status. These groups tend to incorporate under Section 501(c)(4) of the IRS tax code. That is, they don’t pay taxes, but donations to them are not tax-deductible. It helps to hire a trusted name in labor law to handle the paperwork. The Washington, D.C. law firm of Trister, Ross, Schadler & Gold [10] so far has been the preferred legal shop. The firm has set up groups in Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia and elsewhere. Principal partner Michael Trister is a longtime labor lawyer; nearly a decade and a half ago he wrote a federal election law manual for union lawyers. He’s listed in Our DC’s papers as one of three incorporators, with the two others being employees of the firm. A co-principal, Laurence Gold, submitted an amicus brief last October on behalf of SEIU Local 32BJ in a case pertaining to New York State’s campaign finance law.
The SEIU also coordinates activities of its front organizations with those of “Occupy” groups where it counts most of all - on the ground level where the action is. Last October, members of the SEIU-sponsored nonprofit group One Pittsburgh joined forced with members of Occupy Pittsburgh outside the home office of Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. Though touted as an anti-Wall Street event, the rally morphed into a protest against the senator’s recent “no” vote on President Obama’s (not passed) American Jobs Act stimulus proposal. The two groups “go hand-in-hand” admitted Corey Buckner, a member of One Pittsburgh. The following month, Good Jobs LA and Occupy LA demonstrated together outside various branches of Bank of America. And on two occasions last December, some 30 “Our DC” protestors descended on the legislative office of Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, part of organized labor’s “Take Back the Capital” campaign and timed to coincide with an Occupy DC rally. On the weekend following the initial visit to McConnell’s office, members of Our DC and Occupy DC marched together in an “Occupy K Street” rally. Even the rhetoric can be identical. The website of SEIU-sponsored Fight for Philly put it this way a few months ago: “Join thousands of 99-percenters who are coming to Washington, D.C. December 5-9 to take back the Capitol from corporate control.” Take a guess where the expression, “99-percenters,” originated. Hint: Think of the people who came up with “the 1 percent.”

All this leads to the conclusion that that the newly-formed nonprofit anti-business groups and the ‘Occupy’ groups are playing for the same team, the Service Employees International Union. Richard Pollock and The Daily Caller should be commended for first-rate investigative reporting. But there is an issue here beyond the ACORN-style deception. It is the institutional integrity of organized labor generally. For what we have is a major union pursuing its goals by hiding behind “grass-roots” nonprofit organizations. One highly plausible explanation for this is that 501(c)(4) nonprofit income is tax-exempt, whereas union income is taxable. Another is that the union can recruit foot soldiers cheaply without having to organize workplaces or negotiate contracts. Many of these soldiers, with growing sophistication and experience, may well become union organizers or allied progressive activists. It isn’t just the SEIU that plays this game. The website for One Pittsburgh, for example, lists locals of the United Food & Commercial Workers and the Ironworkers as “coalition partners.” And this past February the United Auto Workers listed itself as one participant among many in a “99 percent spring” campaign, even though all Web documents came from an unprotected portion of a UAW server.

Launching and running ad hoc nonprofit groups to minimize one’s political footprints isn’t a practice limited to unions. Corporations certainly have plenty of experience at this. But that doesn’t mean unions should be exempt from scrutiny. Even if undermining corporate self-governance were somehow a noble goal, organized labor, if nothing else, should be transparent about it proceeds in realizing that goal.

Links:
[1] http://nlpc.org/bios/carl-horowitz
[2] http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/10/13/unions-play-major-role-occupy-wall-street-protests
[3] http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/30/local/la-me-occupy-oakland-20120130
[4] http://www.amazon.com/TRAFFIC-DISRUPTION-CAMPAIGN-JUSTICE-JANITORS/dp/1240433085
[5] http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/187765-unions-back-occupy-wall-street-movement
[6] http://www.seiu.org/2011/10/mary-kay-henry-on-importance-of-occupy-wall-street-in-wsj-piece.php
[7] http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/05/secretive-nationwide-network-gives-seiu-new-organizing-muscle/
[8] http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/08/secretive-seiu-network-partners-with-occupy-movement-raises-hell/
[9] http://thisisourdc.org/
[10] http://www.tristerross.com/
[11] http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/09/20/union-support-obama-democrats-eroding
[12] http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/04/18/ex-seiu-official-caught-tape-revealing-economic-destabilization-plan
[13] http://nlpc.org/stories/2010/03/23/acorn-formally-disbands-may-reform-under-new-name
[14] http://nlpc.org/stories/2010/05/10/mary-kay-henry-elected-new-seiu-president
[15] http://nlpc.org/stories/2010/04/26/stern-leave-seiu-leaves-troubled-legacy-despite-membership-rise
[16] http://nlpc.org/category/keywords/afl-cio
[17] http://nlpc.org/category/people/mary-kay-henry
[18] http://nlpc.org/category/people/michael-trister
[19] http://nlpc.org/category/keywords/occupy-wall-street
[20] http://nlpc.org/category/people/richard-pollock
[21] http://nlpc.org/category/keywords/service-employees-international-union-seiu
[22] http://nlpc.org/category/project-name/union-corruption-update
[23] http://nlpc.org/category/people/wade-rathke

Solomon, 62, is a career NLRB attorney. With an economics degree from Brown University, he joined the agency in 1972 as a field examiner in Seattle. That was just after the Boeing Bust of 1971. Solomon paid a little more than $100 a month for a furnished one-bedroom apartment in Madison Park.
“With a fireplace and a balcony, right on Lake Washington,” Solomon recalled.

As he roved the five-state Seattle region to check workers’ claims of wrongful termination and discrimination — many linked to mining and manufacturing jobs — Solomon became convinced a power imbalance sometimes exists between employees and employers.

“You’d go to Kalispell, Montana, say, and check into a motel. People would start knocking on your door and say they heard the labor board was in town,” he said.
That stint pushed Solomon into law school at Tulane University; he wanted to prosecute, not just investigate, unfair labor practices.

He arrived at NLRB’s Washington, D.C., headquarters in fall 1976. The independent federal agency is responsible for ensuring workers’ right to unionize and to engage in strikes and other protected activities. It also protects employers from unfair boycotts or picketing.

The NLRB’s general counsel operates independently of the agency’s five-member board, which is appointed by the president.

The general counsel files charges, which are heard by an administrative-law judge. The judge’s ruling can be appealed to the board. The board’s decisions can set precedents in enforcing the National Labor Relations Act.

In March 2010, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 751 filed a complaint with the NLRB alleging that Boeing built its second 787 jetliner assembly line in South Carolina to get back at the union for past strikes and to discourage future ones. The union’s seventh and most recent strike ended after 57 days in November 2008.

The NLRB’s Seattle regional office found merit in the union’s claims and recommended filing a complaint. Among the evidence cited was a videotaped newspaper interview by Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Jim Albaugh, who said the overriding factor behind the move was not high wages or poor business climate, but “work stoppage, you know, every three years.”

In fall 2010, Solomon took the unusual step of calling Boeing and Machinists officials to Washington, D.C., so he could hear their arguments. Solomon said he did so because of the “enormity” of the stakes. Boeing had spent $750 million to build the North Charleston plant, an investment the company and its supporters feared could be undone by the complaint.

Solomon said he tried for three months to broker a settlement before filing the complaint, but failed.

Boeing denied each and every allegation. It argued economic factors and geographic diversity largely steered the relocation. It also said Machinists in Everett had suffered no job losses because the second 787 final-assembly line never existed there, and thus could not have been moved or transferred, as the NLRB alleged.
Companies can legitimately move or close operations as they see fit. But it’s illegal to do so in retaliation for past strikes or to avert future ones.
“Companies can make rational economic decisions that can be in violation of the National Labor Relations Act,” Solomon said.
Partisan flash point

Solomon’s decision roiled an agency already caught in political cross hairs. Threats by GOP senators to block appointees had kept President Obama from filling vacancies on the NLRB board. Until January, the last time the board was at a full five members was August 2010.

Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington, D.C., think tank, said some NLRB board members as well as previous general counsels have been highly political. But Eisenbrey said Solomon has been less partisan than most.

The NLRB gave its critics further ammunition when internal agency emails revealed staff members mocking the Boeing case.

The emails, obtained by a conservative watchdog group under the Freedom of Information Act, included this note from Solomon to the outgoing chairwoman of the board: “You go to geneva and I get a job with airbus. We screwed up the us economy and now we can tackle Europe.”

Solomon defended the exchanges as natural gallows humor from professionals who felt unjustly under siege.

“All those emails are post (Boeing) complaint,” he said. “I don’t think it shows bias.”

Still, Solomon said one good thing rose from the public attacks.

“Many people for the first time know that there is a National Labor Relations Act, and that we do protect workers,” Solomon said.

“The employees were also denied the use of the break room because the management thought it would be a venue to discuss anti-union activities,” said Matt Muggeridge, the NRWF attorney representing the employees.

According to the complaint of Coralina Alcantara while being interrogated by hotel management she and her coworkers were ordered by the “employer’s legal counsel ... to stop any and all conduct related to union opposition.”

“Union and company officials have colluded to force the union bosses’ so-called ‘representation’ on these workers,” said Mark Mix, President of National Right to Work. “Marriott workers are being subjected to a vicious campaign of intimidation—including sexual harassment—at the hands of forced-dues hungry union bosses and with the approval of weak-kneed company officials.”

The employees want—along with other appropriate remedies - “immediate cessation to the workplace harassment by union organizers; interrogation of employees by the employer; coercion of employees by the employer to discourage protected activity; and implementation of any agreement between the union and employer which promotes or tolerates the union and e1nployer’s illegal conduct.”

Neither the union nor the Marriott hotel responded to requests for a statement before this article went to press.

A union spokesman, John Turchiano, disputed the allegations in the Tuesday edition of the New York Post. He said they were ridiculous.

“I’m 100 percent confident the (NLRB) will throw out the charges. Any of our hundreds of members who know the organizers involved here know how absurd these charges are,’’ Mr. Turchiano said.

But the move also puts Obama at odds with business, which has clashed repeatedly with the NLRB in recent months. Bruce Josten, the chief lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, denounced the recess appointments as political favoritism and said they will “further poison the well” at the labor board.

The president is wading into uncharted waters with the appointments, made while the Senate is holding pro forma sessions. Dave Hirschmann, a top official with the Chamber, said a court battle over the constitutionality of Obama’s action is a near certainty.

The labor board has come under fire from GOP lawmakers and business groups for a number of decisions, most notably a complaint against Boeing last year for allegedly retaliating against union workers.

Critics argue the Boeing complaint and other actions by the NLRB, such as proposing a regulation to speed up union elections, are an abuse of the board’s authority. The House has passed legislation that would limit the labor board’s legal powers, and GOP senators have promised to block nominations to the NLRB.
The GOP’s blockade of NLRB nominees would have prevented it from issuing rules and regulations, since it needs at least three members to form a quorum. The recess appointment of Craig Becker expired Tuesday, leaving the NLRB with only two members.

With Block, Flynn and Griffin now members of the NLRB, the labor board is up to its full roster of five members.

Republicans tried to prevent recess appointments by keeping the Senate in pro forma session over the holiday break, but the White House said that maneuver is meaningless.

“Gimmicks do not override the President’s constitutional authority to make appointments to keep the government running,” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in a blog post Wednesday.

Lawyers for several business groups immediately began to explore their legal options to challenge the recess appointments.

“We are considering all possible legal recourse. We believe it’s clear the president has violated decades of precedent and possibly the Constitution,” said Geoff Burr, vice president of federal affairs for the Associated Builders & Contractors.

Burr is chairman of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace. The coalition is suing the NLRB over its proposal to speed up union elections, as well as another rule requiring employers to post notices informing workers of their organizing rights.

Other business lobbyists were also mulling legal action.

“The NAM will consider all options to put a halt to this, including pursuing legal action,” said Joe Trauger, vice president of human resources for the National Association of Manufacturers.

Democrats on Capitol Hill said the NLRB recess appointments were needed.

“By appointing these nominees, President Obama acted responsibly in order to ensure that the workers and businesses across the country who rely on the stable functioning of this important agency would not be caught in the crossfire of the Republicans’ misguided ideological battle,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, in a statement.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka hailed Obama’s move as a victory for workers.

“We commend the President for exercising his constitutional authority to ensure that crucially important agencies protecting workers and consumers are not shut down by Republican obstructionism. Working families and consumers should not pay the price for political ploys that have repeatedly undercut the enforcement of rules against Wall Street abuses and the rights of working people,” Trumka said in a statement.

James Callahan, president of the International Union of Operating Engineers, where Griffin was general counsel, said Obama recess-appointing Griffin to the labor board was the right move.

“Richard is highly respected by lawyers on both the labor and business side of labor law. His fair-minded approach to legal questions is exactly what the NLRB needs,” Callahan said in a statement. “Some Republican members of the Senate have made a determined effort to cripple the NLRB and other government agencies by refusing to act on President Obama’s nominees, no matter how qualified. Leaving the NLRB without a quorum would penalize both labor and employers.”

In the past, VW Chattanooga CEO Frank Fischer has only said that the decision on whether or not to unionize is up to the workers.
Although Krebs said it will be challenging for the UAW to organize German automakers, such as Volkswagen—especially in the South—the strategy is logical because unions are strong in Europe.

“If you are going to do it, going after the German plants makes more sense,” she said. “It’s an uphill battle, but it’s a battle they have to take on.”

The TWU said the vote was tainted by management pressure tactics, including threatening that attendants could lose pay, benefits and their jobs if workers voted in a union.

“We’re disappointed in the results… but this does not change our determination to support flight attendants at Virgin America with the full resources of our union,” Frank McCann, the union’s organizing director, said in a statement. “Every worker, in every job category, has a right to vote free of intimidation.”