Coming one day after the Senate rejected advancing the nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an op-ed piece by columnist Harold Meyerson in today’s The Washington Post proclaims that the Obama administration has been “close to an unmitigated disaster” for organized labor. According to the article, the Democrats’ loss of the Senate’s 60-seat filibuster-proof supermajority sounded the death knell for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), any alleged “compromise” EFCA legislation, and the possibility to seat Craig Becker as a member of the NLRB. Although the column may have been written as a rallying cry for labor proponents, it is telling that a pro-union columnist is pronouncing labor’s legislative agenda dead so early in Obama’s term.

Photo credit: Christine Gehrig