Washington, DC (March 29, 2010) – After President Barack Obama installed Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lawyer Craig Becker as a recess appointee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Saturday, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys are now filing 12 recusal motions asking Becker to step aside in any pending case involving the Foundation.

As associate general counsel of the SEIU, Becker directly litigated against Foundation attorneys and helped orchestrate legal strategies for SEIU affiliates across the United States, so he should recuse himself from cases involving the SEIU or its affiliates. Moreover, his published writings indicate an extreme level of hostility against the Foundation and its legal arguments on behalf of workers, even when the NLRB or United States Supreme Court have agreed and ruled against union officials for their abusive practices.

The Foundation’s free legal aid cases frequently involve unfair labor practices committed by union officials, such as coercive practices to corral workers into union membership and illegal use of fees paid by nonmembers for political purposes. Becker’s record suggests he is unable to give workers who turn to the Foundation for help an impartial hearing and instead will simply rubber-stamp whatever union boss wrongdoings are put before him.

“Craig Becker’s radical views on unionization caught the eyes of concerned citizens who normally don’t pay much attention to obscure agencies like the NLRB,” said Patrick Semmens, legal information director for the National Right to Work Foundation. “Becker’s record shows his personal bias and animosity specifically towards our nonprofit organization and generally towards workers who reject unionization or challenge union official abuse.”

In a bipartisan vote, the Senate in February voted against moving the nomination forward over concerns of Becker’s impartiality and whether he would use his seat on the federal agency to bypass a close vote in Congress and replace the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives with intimidating card check campaigns in which union operatives harass workers into signing union authorization cards.

The coercive nature of card check drives is at the heart of some of the cases in which the Foundation has asked for Becker’s recusal. Union lawyers have devised a legal strategy to overturn Dana Corp, a landmark case won by Foundation attorneys in which the NLRB granted employees the ability to file a decertification petition and demand a secret ballot election to toss out union officials from their workplace within 45 days after an employer recognizes a monopoly bargaining agent by card check.

Becker has strongly criticized the Foundation’s mere involvement in Dana, as well as the independent discretion of the NLRB’s General Counsel to put the case before the Board. Foundation attorneys have several Dana decertification petitions pending with the NLRB, but Becker appears to have pre-judged the issues at stake.

“The National Right to Work Foundation is the only charitable organization providing free legal aid to workers victimized by union boss abuse,” continued Semmens. “These workers deserve a fair hearing.”

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.