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Obama Overcomes GOP Resistance, Appoints NLRB Members

March 30, 2010

After months of Republican intransigence, President Obama broke the Senate GOP’s obstructionism of federal nominees Saturday by announcing that he would use the recess period to appoint 15 of his nominees to fill important administration posts.

In a victory for working families, two of those appointees – Mark Pearce and Craig Becker – are to the National Labor Relations Board, filling two spots that have been vacant since 2007.

Said International President Edwin D. Hill:

For too long, the NLRB has been operating with a skeleton crew, making it impossible for the board to do its job: uphold the rights of employees in the workplace. And for too long, a GOP minority has blocked Obama’s nominees to that board for reasons of crude partisan maneuvering. I applaud the president’s bold action to break the logjam and get our federal government moving for working families.

The 15 nominees Obama plans to appoint have been on hold for an average of 214 days, says the White House.

The Senate has a constitutional role to “advise and consent” to presidential nominees, but the president has the power to override the Senate when Congress is not in session. Like any piece of Senate legislation, it only takes one lawmaker to hold up presidential nominees. More than 200 of Obama’s federal picks have been placed on hold by Senate GOP members.

Becker – who received broad bipartisan support in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee earlier this year – was a top target for anti-labor lawmakers, which objected to the legal work he did for the SEIU and other labor unions.  The GOP filibustered Becker after his nomination and has shown no sign of relenting.

Said Obama in a statement:

The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees. But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions … I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government.

The other new NLRB member, Mark Pearce, is a long-time labor lawyer out off Buffalo, N.Y.

Photo used under a Creative Commons License from Flickr user JMTimages