Senators will question the unconfirmed members of President Trump’s labor policy team on Thursday, with Democrats expected to vigorously interview the president’s picks to fill the open Republican seats on the National Labor Relations Board, the main federal labor law enforcement agency and the driving force behind most of the policy changes instituted under former President Barack Obama.
The nominees, lawyers Marvin Kaplan and William Emanuel, would give the board a Republican majority for the first time since President George W. Bush’s administration.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing also will feature lawyer Patrick Pizzella, Trump’s nominee to be deputy secretary of labor. The pick has aroused controversy since Pizzella formerly worked for lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was conviced in 2006 of attempting to bribe federal officials, among other crimes. Pizzella was never charged with any crimes, but it is widely expected that Democrats will press him on the connection. He is acting chairman of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which handles labor-management relations for federal employees, and has been with the agency since 2013.
“We’re expecting fireworks,” said one trade association lobbyist who requested anonymity.
Republicans are hoping to use the hearing to make the case that labor policy was tilted heavily toward labor unions during Obama’s administration and needs to be rebalanced. “Mr. Kaplan and Mr. Emanuel are eminently qualified and will restore stability to our nation’s workplaces and turn away from its past as a partisan advocate for organized labor to the neutral umpire it ought to be,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the HELP committee.
Kaplan is chief counsel of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, an independent agency that hears appeals of citations and penalties by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He was previously a GOP staffer for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and House Education and the Workforce Committee. Emanuel is a shareholder with Littler Mendelson, a management-side law firm that specializes in labor matters, often before the labor board.
Both are expected to have strong pro-business leanings. Should they win Senate confirmation, they would give the NLRB a 3-2 Republican majority, allowing it to reverse numerous policies established in during the Obama administration. Topping the wishlist of most business groups is for the board to reverse its “joint employer” doctrine. The measure vastly expanded legal liability for corporations by making them responsible for workplace violations at separate companies they do business with. Originally, the doctrine applied only when one business had “direct control” over another’s employees. During the Obama administration, that was expanded to much more ambiguous “indirect control.” The NLRB has used it to pursue a major case against McDonald’s Corp., arguing that the company is responsible for violations at its hundreds of franchisees, although many of them are separate businesses that merely rent out the corporate brand.
After the labor board adopted the expanded joint employer standard, other federal agencies followed suit. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta this month formally rescinded his department’s adoption of it. The NLRB, however, is separate agency that operates independently and is still pursuing cases under the expanded standard.
