The AFL-CIO on Tuesday urged lawmakers to reject President Trump’s picks to fill two vacant seats on the National Labor Relations Board, the main federal labor law enforcement agency. The labor federation said it has no confidence that the nominees, William Emanuel and Marvin Kaplan, would faithfully administer the law.
“Neither man said anything at the confirmation hearing to give working people any confidence that they would vigorously enforce the [National Labor Relations Act] consistent with the law’s purpose of protecting workers’ right to organize and promoting collective bargaining,” said William Samuel, director of government affairs for the AFL-CIO, in an open letter to lawmakers.
The Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is scheduled to vote on the nominees Wednesday. Should they be confirmed by the full Senate, they would give the five-member board a 3-2 Republican majority for the first time since President George W. Bush’s administration. The labor board’s members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but the agency otherwise operates independently. It currently has a Republican chairman, Philip Miscimarra, but the other two remaining members, Mark Gaston Pearce and Lauren McFerran, are Democratic nominees and the board operates by simple majority.
Kaplan is chief counsel of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, a federal agency. Prior to that he was a Republican staffer for the 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 NLRB.
Samuel argued that neither pick was promperly qualified: Emanuel because he has solely represented employers and Kaplan because he has never practiced private labor law. “Some in Congress and in the business community have launched relentless attacks on the NLRB and sought to get key NLRB decisions and actions overturned. Kaplan and Emanuel have been part of these attacks, and they said nothing at the confirmation hearing to distance themselves from these attacks or suggest that they would bring a less hostile, and more pro-NLRA view to their work,” the letter said.
Republicans and business groups have argued that the board tilted heavily pro-union under former President Barack Obama. “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, at last week’s hearing.
The AFL-CIO took a different position on the urgency of Senate confirmation of NLRB nominations in 2013 when Obama picked a full slate of five for the board. “]orking people need and deserve a functioning NLRB, and confirmation of a full package will provide that stability. The labor movement understands that when the NLRB is not at full strength and cannot enforce its orders, America’s economy falls out of balance, as it is today with record inequality and a shrinking middle class. We urge members of the Senate to act quickly and confirm the president’s full slate of nominees,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in April 2013.
