President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Craig Becker and Mark Pearce to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in a White House press release issued Friday, April 24, 2009. Congress created the NLRB in 1935 to administer the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the principal law that governs relations between labor unions, employers, and employees in private-sector workplaces.
The governing NLRB, which decides labor issues, is one of the two major parts of the NLRB. The President appoints Board members to five-year terms with the Senate’s consent, and one member’s term expires each year. Currently, Wilma B. Liebman is the chair of the NLRB, Peter C. Schaumber is a member, and there are three vacancies.
Becker currently serves as associate general counsel to both the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), one of the largest unions in the United States, and the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), a voluntary federation of 56 national and international labor unions. He has practiced and taught labor law for the past 27 years and has argued labor and employment cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and in almost every federal court of appeals.
Pearce is one of the founding partners of Creighton, Pearce, Johnsen & Giroux, located in Buffalo, New York. He has practiced labor law his entire career and has argued union-side labor and employment law cases before federal and state courts and agencies. He also served as a board member on the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals.
Read the press release and the nominees’ biographies
————————————————-
Learn how to manage your workforce in the face of an emboldened labor movement and a union-friendly administration and Congress by participating in the all-new extended webinar Union Avoidance Virtual Summit: Preparing for EFCA and Staying Union-Free in 2009 and Beyond on Wednesday, April 29.