NEW NLRB APPOINTMENTS

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=04&year=2009&base_name=new_nlrb_appointments#114686

The president has announced two appointments to the five-member National Labor Relations Board. He had previously announced that Wilma Liebman, formerly a regular member, would become the chair. Now, he is proposing to add
Craig Becker and Mark Pearce to the board. Becker is currently associate general counsel for both the SEIU and the AFL-CIO; Pearce is a longtime labor lawyer who co-founded his own firm to pursue union-side labor law (full bios of both after the jump). It's not the Employee Free Choice Act, but this is a nice gift to the unions all the same. Presuming, of course, the Senate confirms these nominees -- there's a reason that the five-member board currently only has two members...

-- Tim Fernholz

Craig Becker, Nominee for Board Member, National Labor Relations Board

Craig Becker currently serves as Associate General Counsel to both the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations. He graduated summa cum laude from Yale College in 1978 and received his J.D. in 1981 from Yale Law School where he was an Editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school he clerked for the Honorable Donald P. Lay, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. For the past 27 years, he has practiced and taught labor law. He was a Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law between 1989 and 1994 and has also taught at the University of Chicago and Georgetown Law Schools. He has published numerous articles on labor and employment law in scholarly journals, including the Harvard Law Review and Chicago Law Review, and has argued labor and employment cases in virtually every federal court of appeals and before the United States Supreme Court.


Mark Pearce, Nominee for Board Member, National Labor Relations Board

Mark Gaston Pearce has been a labor lawyer for his entire career. He is one of the founding partners of the Buffalo, New York law firm of Creighton, Pearce, Johnsen & Giroux where he practices union side labor and employment law before state and federal courts and agencies including the N.Y.S. Public Employment Relations Board, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the National Labor Relations Board. Pearce in 2008 was appointed by the NYS Governor to serve as a Board Member on the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals, an independent quasi-judicial agency responsible for review of certain rulings and compliance orders of the NYS Department of Labor in matters including wage and hour law. Pearce has taught several courses in the labor studies program at Cornell University’s School of Industrial Labor Relations Extension. He is a Fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. Prior to 2002, Pearce practiced union side labor law and employment law at Lipsitz, Green, Fahringer, Roll, Salisbury & Cambria LLP. From 1979 to 1994, he was an attorney and District Trial Specialist for the NLRB in Buffalo, NY. Pearce received his J.D. from State University of New York, and his B.A. from Cornell University.

Posted by Tim Fernholz on April 24, 2009 5:06 PM | Permalink

[TexasProgresive]

1. What's your take, Steve

on the makeup of the whole board? Will these appointments return the NLRB back into something that is friendly to labor?

[Omaha Steve]

2. The last 8 years of the NLRB have been very bad for workers

President Obama has been very good to workers and organized labor across the board. This from a man who caucused for Obama while his union spent over $7 million for Senator Clinton. President Clinton had nowhere near the pro worker record in 8 years that President Obama has done in 100 days.

Don't forget I applied for Secretary of Labor through the DU last November.