List of Chairs of the National Labor Relations Board
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has five Members, each of whom serves for a five-year term. Terms are staggered so that one Member's term expires each year (although delays in nominations and confirmation, as well as the use of recess appointments, can upset this schedule). Members are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate. Traditionally, a majority of the board belongs to the President's political party. The President designates the Chair from one of the existing Members. The Chair serves at the pleasure of the President, and may be demoted without cause or warning at any time.
Wilma B. Liebman
On his first day in office, President Barack Obama designated Liebman to be the NLRB's Chair. She was the second woman to hold the position in the board's 78-year history. During her first year as Chair, Liebman confronted a five-member Board which only had two members. Since three members' terms expired in December 2007, the NLRB has operated with just two members—Liebman and Member Peter Schaumber. President George W. Bush refused to make some nominations to the Board and Senate Democrats refused to confirm others. Just before the Board lost a quorum, the five Members agreed to delegate their authority to a three-person panel (as provided for by the National Labor Relations Act). Only two of the members of the panel (Liebman and Schaumber) would remain on the Board, but the Board concluded that these two members would constitute a quorum of the panel and thus could make decisions on behalf of the entire Board. Liebman and Schaumber informally agreed to decide only those cases which were noncontroversial (in their view), and issued more than 400 decisions between January 2008 and September 2009. In April 2009, President Obama nominated Craig Becker (Associate General Counsel of the Service Employees International Union), Mark Gaston Pearce (a member on the Industrial Board of Appeals, an agency of the New York State Department of Labor), and Brian Hayes (Republican Labor Policy Director for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) to fill the three empty seats on the NLRB. Meanwhile, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, and 7th Circuit Court of Appeals all upheld the two-member rump NLRB's authority to decide cases, while the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals did not. In September 2009, the Justice Department asked the U.S. Supreme Court to immediately hear arguments concerning the dispute, given the high stakes involved. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in October and agreed to decide the issue. In the spring of 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that the NLRB could have no quorum with just two members, likely invalidating hundreds of previous rulings made by Liebman and Schaumber. Becker's nomination appeared to fail on February 8, 2010, after Republican Senators (led by John McCain) threatened to filibuster his nomination. President Obama said he would consider making recess appointments to the NLRB due to the Senate's failure to move on any of the three nominations. True to his word, Obama on March 27, 2010 recess appointed both Becker and Pearce to the NLRB.