HR Management & Compliance

NLRB Member Resigns Amid Leak Allegations

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which risked losing a quorum just a few months ago, is losing one of its two Republican members. Terence Flynn, who joined the NLRB in January, submitted his resignation on May 26.

The resignation is to be effective July 24, but Flynn already has recused himself from all agency business, according to a statement from the NLRB. He also has asked that President Barack Obama withdraw his nomination for a Board seat before the Senate.

Flynn is one of three members who went on the five-member NLRB on January 9 after Obama used recess appointments to fill the open seats. The Board risked losing a quorum at the beginning of the year when Democrat Craig Becker’s term expired on January 3. The Board was down to three members because nominations to fill the empty seats had been held up in the Senate.

Flynn had been under pressure to resign since the NLRB’s inspector general issued a report on March 23 and another on May 2 claiming that he had inappropriately shared nonpublic Board information with former NLRB member Peter Schaumber. Flynn had been chief counsel to Schaumber while he served as an NLRB member. (His term expired in August 2010.)

The leaked material included a draft of an unpublished decision and dissents in three cases, according to various media reports. Some of the material allegedly was leaked while Schaumber was a labor adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He no longer holds a campaign post, according to the reports.

The inspector general reports prompted calls for Flynn to resign. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called for his resignation in March, and Representative George Miller, a California Democrat, called for his resignation earlier in May, according to an AFL-CIO statement.

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