Skip to main content

Senate HELP Committee Set to Vote on NLRB Nominee


Today, President Donald Trump's third nominee, John Ring, to the National Labor Relations Board ('NLRB') is set to have a confirmation vote on his nomination by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions ("HELP"). As always, many readers might wonder what is next or what to expect with the confirmation vote.  Let us break things down to give a quick overview of what to expect moving forward.

Ring is a labor attorney with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius with an expected tendency to side with employers in labor disputes, should he be confirmed.  President Trump nominated Ring a few months ago to fill a vacant seat on the NLRB.  Readers might recall that last week, the HELP Committee held a confirmation hearing on the nomination.  As expected, in light of the NLRB's decision to vacate its decision in Hy-Brand, many Democrats on the Committee chose to make conflict of interest matters a focal point and grilled Ring on the topic.  Despite the efforts of Democrats to make conflict of interest a major point of contention in an attempt to weaken Ring's nomination, I do not think they convinced any Republicans on the Committee to vote against the nomination.  (Remember, Republicans have majority control of the Committee.  So long as Republicans vote along party lines, Ring's nomination should clear the HELP Committee and go before the full Senate for a vote...which also has a majority of Republicans).

As I noted previously, with it being being expected that Republicans will confirm Ring's nomination, that would give Republican appointed members on the NLRB a 3 - 2 majority.  Attention would then quickly turn to whether the NLRB would take up another joint employer case which would overturn Browning-Ferris.  However, would anyone on the NLRB recuse themselves?  Assuming Emanuel did when another case came before the NLRB, that would likely put an NLRB decision at 2 - 2 (assuming all Board Members voted along 'party lines' based upon which President appointed them).  If that happened, Browning-Ferris would continue to remain in place and Republicans might have to wait until they got a 4 - 1 majority before attempting to overturn the new joint employer standard.  Or perhaps the NLRB would find a case in which no Board Member had to recuse themselves.  I think that is more likely and certainly something the three Republican appointed Board Members would prefer.  

Time will tell, but the big takeaway here is that even if Ring gets confirmed by the HELP Committee today (which is expected), and confirmed by the full Senate (which is expected), overturning Browning-Ferris in the short term is no sure thing.  Maybe Congress can act on the Save Local Business Act to avoid and issues with getting an NLRB decision to overturn Browning-Ferris?


For a CSPAN video of Ring's confirmation hearing:  https://www.c-span.org/video/?441914-1/nlrb-nominee-john-ring-testifies-confirmation-hearing

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies i...
Post a Comment
Read more

What I've Been Reading This Week

Recently, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Commissioner, Chai Feldblum, had her re-nomination on the brink, after Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee took steps to block it .  Readers might have heard that late last week, Commissioner Feldblum's re-nomination quietly slipped away and she tweeted out a thank you to supporters and friends, acknowledging that her time at the EEOC was over.  While there has not been much in the way of a further update in regard to that ongoing saga, we wait to see how things will play out at the EEOC, now that it has lost a quorum until additional Commissioners are confirmed by the Senate. For the time being, there are other developments for readers to review this week.  In particular, I call attention to the article on managing a wage & hour audit by the Department of Labor as well as steps an employer can take to better ensure compliance with the ADA. As always, below are a couple articles that caught my eye this week. ...
Post a Comment
Read more