NLRB Appointments

April 28th, 2009 | By

President Obama has announced his intention to nominate two union attorneys to be Board members of the NLRB.  They are Craig Becker and Mark G. Pearce.

Becker has been Associate General Counsel for the Service Employees International Union for 17 years and holds the same position at the AFL-CIO.  He has practiced and taught labor law for 27 years.

Pearce practices labor law at a law firm in Buffalo, NY that represents unions and individual employees.  He previously taught labor law and began his career at the NLRB.

The NLRB has a total of five Board Members.  Traditionally, the President appoints three Members from his party to the staggered terms of the NLRB and designates one of them to be Chairman.  The two other Board Members are traditionally from the opposition party.  At the present time, there are two Board Members serving on the NLRB who were appointed during the prior administration- Chairman Liebman (D) and Member Schaumber (R).   If these two new appointments by President Obama are confirmed by the Senate,  there will be a Democratic majority for the first time in many years.

The President also nominates the General Counsel of the NLRB.

Update re : EFCA – Senator Arlen Specter (R – PA) previously announced that he would vote against a cloture motion on EFCA thereby making it unlikely that a filibuster could be ended.  Today, Senator Specter announced that he will run for reelection to the Senate next year as a Democrat.  This will likely change the playing field for the pasage of EFCA.  Stay tuned for new developments.

Update re NLRB Nominees:   On December 28, 2009, the Washington Post reported that the nomination of Craig Becker to the NLRB has been returned by Congress to the White House for “reconsideration.”   Speculation is that Becker may request that his nomination be withdrawn in view of the strong likelihood that Senator John McCain will not allow this nomination to be passed out of the Senate committee for a vote by the full Senate.  On January 7, 2010, the NY Times reported that President Obama will resubmit Becker as a nominee to the NLRB.