The Hill has the incomplete report on Obama’s decision to re-nominate Richard Griffin to the National Labor Relations Board.
Obama sent the Senate a package of nominations that included NLRB Members Sharon Block and Richard Griffin, who were both installed at the agency in a show of power that was ruled invalid by a federal court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled last month that Block and Griffin’s recess appointments to the NLRB were unconstitutional. Since then, Republicans have sought to challenge decisions made by the labor board during the tenures of Block and Griffin, which began in January 2012.
The Hill fails to mention that one problem with Griffin’s nomination is his mob ties. That’s right, Barack Obama is nominating a man with mob ties to a board that deals with labor unions. According to a statement released by the Workforce Fairness Institute:
“Today’s news that President Obama has re-nominated Richard Griffin and Sharon Block to the National Labor Relations Board demonstrates once again that payback to Big Labor bosses is a top priority in this White House. Both Griffin and Block continue to issue decisions considered illicit by the D.C. Circuit Court because they are not lawfully on the Board. Griffin’s record should result in the President asking him to step down, not offering him a job at taxpayers’ expense. Griffin is embroiled in controversy having recently been named a defendant in an embezzlement case, in addition to serving as long-time general counsel to a union tainted by mob ties and corruption. Now that President Obama has decided to re-nominate Griffin, the U.S. Senate should promptly take up the nomination and reveal to the American people his troubling and deeply-flawed record.” — Fred Wszolek, Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI)
The Free Beacon details the alleged embezzling scheme.
According to the lawsuit filed by 10 members of Los Angeles-based IUOE Local 501, which represents workers in Southern California and Southern Nevada, Griffin participated in a conspiracy to manipulate the operation of Local 501 “through a pattern of racketeering activity.”
Griffin was served with the complaint and a court summons relating to the lawsuit at his Washington, D.C., home on Dec. 4, according to documents filed in court.
The complaint states that in 2009, James McLaughlin, then the business manager of Local 501, began investigating suspicious expenditures by Dennis Lundy, a Local 501 member who was in charge of the union’s apprenticeship fund. McLaughlin suspected Lundy was embezzling money from the fund.
McLaughlin demanded that Lundy repay about $4,000 to the fund after an independent audit, which Lundy refused to do. The investigation caught the attention of IUOE’s general president, Vince Giblin, reportedly a friend of Lundy’s.
Giblin demanded that McLaughlin drop the investigation. The latter refused. According to the lawsuit, Giblin would later tell another Local 501 official, “I told [McLaughlin] to make that Lundy thing disappear and he never did. That lazy fat f*** has got to go!”
Giblin threatened to place Local 501 into the trusteeship of the IUOE unless McLaughlin two other Local 501 officials assisting the Lundy investigation resigned.
Griffin served as Giblin’s point man during much of the back-and-forth with McLaughlin, according to the complaint, earning him a spot on the lawsuit’s list of defendants. The court filing repeatedly refers to IUOE’s demands as coming directly from Griffin and cites “threats, communicated from Giblin through” Griffin.
Read more at the link. This is who Barack Obama deems worthy of occupying a powerful, taxpayer-funded post that deals with labor issues.
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