Bush to Nominate Another Anti-Union Board Member

According to the Daily Labor Report, President George W. Bush said he will nominate Peter Kirsanow to the NLRB. Kirsanow is a partner with Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP in Cleveland and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights since May 2002.

Among his acts as a commissioner, Kirsanow voted to have a report criticizing Bush’s record on civil rights removed from the commission’s website and abstained from voting to approve a report that found the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was unable to meet its recommendations due to budget and staffing cuts.
In 1997, Kirsanow opposed a Clinton executive order requiring project labor agreements on federal construction projects. He also opposes the minimum wage and affirmative action. But he supported a proposed federal law requiring stricter reporting of union finances because, “Over the years, millions of employees subsidized, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, union activities wholly unrelated to employees’ wages or terms and conditions of employment.” Kirsanow’s firm’s website boasts it “regularly counsel[s] employers on maintaining a union free workplace.”
According to the Daily Labor Report, a senior Democratic staffer on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee said Kirsanow’s nomination is “unacceptable” and “deliberately provocative.”