We Got Five! Senate Confirms Five NLRB Members and Democratic Majority

We did it! For the first time in a decade, the National Labor Relations Board has five Senate-confirmed members. The three Democratic members confirmed by the Senate are Mark Pearce, Nancy Schiffer, and Kent Hirozawa. The Senate-confirmed Republicans are Harry Johnson and Phil Miscimarra.

CWA led this fight, as e-mails and phone calls from thousands of CWA members around the country called on the Senate to restore the full enforcement power of this critical agency. But we couldn't have done it alone.

Progressive groups like the Democracy Initiative and Fix the Senate Now, a coalition of more than 70 organizations, held lawmakers' feet to the fire with an ad campaign, rallies and letters. CWA and union, environmental, LGBT, good government and social justice activists pushed Democrats to break the Republican minority's obstruction that has kept many of President Obama's executive nominations waiting for Senate action for as long as two years.

Allies like the Sierra Club, NAACP, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Alliance for Justice spelled out how important the NLRB is to all working families in newspaper ads before the vote.

"Our path for change is the Democracy Initiative, an organization of unions, civil rights and community groups, greens, people of faith and others. We will continue to work together to fix the broken Senate rules, end the pervasive influence of corporate money in our politics, stop voter suppression and adopt a path to citizenship for immigrants," said CWA President Larry Cohen.

Right now, we're continuing to press senators to confirm the languishing executive branch nominations and judicial nominees who have also been victims of the broken Senate rules. With 60 votes required for the Senate to move forward on any business, and Republicans determined to abuse the filibuster to block key nominations, it's no surprise that so little is accomplished. But the NLRB fight proved we can change that. United, we can make democracy work again.