President Obama rounds out his picks for vacant NLRB seats

Beginning late April of this year, President Obama made his first of three nominations to the NLRB. The Board, presently composed of Chairman Wilma Liebman (D) and Member Peter Schaumber (R), has been the focus of judicial scrutiny over whether it has the authority to issue decisions as a quorum of just two. That issue was petitioned to the Supreme Court on May 27th. With that backdrop, one would believe that seating new members to the Board ought to move quickly.

While perhaps more urgent matters have stolen the spotlight, here are the President's picks for Member, National Labor Relations Board:

• Republican Senate staffer Brian Hayes. Hayes currently serves as the Republican labor policy director for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Previously, he was in private practice for over 25 years, representing management clients exclusively in all aspects of labor and employment law. Hayes has represented employers before the Board, the EEOC, and various state agencies and has extensive experience negotiating labor contracts on behalf of management clients, as well as representing clients in arbitrations, mediations and other forms of alternative dispute resolution. Before entering private practice, Hayes clerked for the Chief Judge of the NLRB and thereafter served as counsel to the Chairman of the NLRB. Hayes earned his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.



• Democrat Craig Becker. Becker is associate general counsel to both the SEIU and the AFL-CIO. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School and has practiced and taught labor law for the past 27 years, as a professor of law at the UCLA School of Law and at the University of Chicago and Georgetown. Becker has published numerous articles on labor and employment law in scholarly journals and has argued labor and employment cases in virtually every federal court of appeals and before the US Supreme Court.



• Mark Pearce, Democrat and founding partner of Creighton, Pearce, Johnsen & Giroux, a Buffalo, New York, law firm. Pearce practices union-side labor and employment law before state and federal courts and agencies. In 2008, he was appointed to the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals, an independent quasi-judicial agency responsible for review of certain rulings and compliance orders of the state department of labor in wage and hour matters. Prior to 2002, he practiced union-side labor law and employment law at Lipsitz, Green, Fahringer, Roll, Salisbury & Cambria LLP, and from 1979 to 1994 was an attorney and district trial specialist for the NLRB. Pearce received his J.D. from State University of New York. He is a Fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.

All three nominations have been sent to the Senate; however, hearings have yet to be set on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee calendar. It's also unclear whether the three will be considered as a package or individually.