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.
National Labor Relations Board
The Economic Division was a critical one for the NLRB. Cause-and-effect was one of the fundamental assumptions of the National Labor Relations Act, and for the causes of labor unrest to be understood economic analysis was needed. From the start, the Economic Division undertook three important tasks: 1) Gather economic data in support of cases before the courts; 2) Conduct general studies of labor relations to guide the board in formulating decisions and policies; and 3) Research the history of labor relations (the history of written agreements, whether certain issues were historically part of collective bargaining, how unions functioned internally, trends in employer activities, trends in collective bargaining, whether certain employer actions led to labor disputes, etc.) so that the board could educate itself, the courts, Congress, and the public about labor relations. The first function proved critical to the survival of the NLRB. It was the Economic Division's data and analysis, more than then NLRB's legal reasoning, which proved critical in persuading the Supreme Court to sustain the Wagner Act in "NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel". The Court even cited several Economic Division studies in its decision. In the wake of "Jones & Laughlin Steel", many labor relations experts outside the agency concluded that economic analysis was "an accepted fact" essential to the proper functioning of the agency. The Economic Division did, too. It asked Madden to pair an economist with an attorney in every important case, and prepared outline of the economic data needed to support each case in case it went before the courts.