Bloomberg reports on Craig Becker's nomination to the National Labor Relations Board:

Craig Becker, a union ally nominated by President Barack Obama to the National Labor Relations Board, told lawmakers he won’t try to use his position to make changes to labor laws opposed by business groups. Becker, a Chicago-based associate general counsel for the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO, said during a Senate hearing yesterday that his argument in the past that union-election rules should be rewritten to favor labor were the views of a “scholar.” “If confirmed, my decisions, unlike the views of a scholar, will have practical, concrete and important consequences,” he told members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. “I will have a duty to implement the intent of Congress.”

Good to know that the views of scholars are not practical or concrete.  Back to Bloomberg:

Critics shouldn’t object to Becker “simply because he was a union lawyer -- and a good one,” said Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat.

How about because:

Becker wrote a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article saying that union-election rules should be rewritten in favor of labor, and that the NLRB can do this through regulation, without the consent of Congress.

More on the Minnesota Law Review article. So what is Big Labor's intent here?  Via NAM, the Communications Worker's of America lay it out:

It’s all hands on deck as we plan to push this week for a Senate committee to move on President Obama’s nominations to the National Labor Relations Board...The NRLB is a critical institution when it comes to protecting workers’ rights - especially since the loss of a Senate seat in Massachusetts makes passage of the Employee Free Choice Act virtually impossible.

But Republicans have pushed back against President Obama’s efforts to fill the NLRB. In particular, Republicans - and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - have pledged to oppose the nomination of Becker, who is the associate general counsel of SEIU. The GOP is threatening a filibuster and we can only be sure of 60 votes if we hold the vote before Brown is sworn in on February 11...The HELP Committee is tentatively scheduled to take up Becker’s nomination this Tuesday and vote on Thursday. Then Sen. Reid has to schedule a cloture vote Friday. CWAers are asking their Senators to urge Senator Reid to stick to this schedule and vote for cloture. This is the only way we can have a 2-1 Democratic majority on the NLRB.

Shorter: the public hates the Employee Free Choice act, the public elected Scott Brown; let's hurry up and ignore the public's wishes on the latter so that our guy can ignore the public's wishes on the former once he is on the NLRB.  Nice.

More on the Chamber's opposition here, and more on this "egregious mistake and dangerous precedent for the Senate to push through his nomination during lame duck period."