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.
Betty S. Murphy
In February 1975, when Murphy was sworn in to serve as the first woman to chair the National Labor Relations Board, President Gerald Ford said he chose her as "the most qualified and best respected person" for the job and not because of her sex. The AFL-CIO declined to oppose her nomination, noting that she had represented both management and labor fairly during her legal career. While on the NLRB, the five-member board handed down rulings regarding rules for collective bargaining and union organization in the healthcare field, allowing separate bargaining units for clerks, maintenance workers, medical technicians and nurses, in which Murphy cast the deciding vote. Harking back to her journalism career, she cast the only vote against a 1976 decision regarding the rights of newspaper employees to form unions, noting her dissent that the skills required to be a reporter were "the essence of professionalism". She was succeeded as NLRB chairman by John H. Fanning in 1977 and served on the board until 1979 when she turned down an interim appointment by President Jimmy Carter.