Senate Committee Holds Hearing Today on New NLRB Nominee

The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) meets today to consider the nomination of Lauren McFerran to replace Nancy Schiffer on the National Labor Relations Board. President Obama withdrew the nomination of Sharon Block in the face of unrelenting GOP opposition to her.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), HELP committee chairman, called Obama's withdrawal of Block "truly disappointing." The "only consolation is the president's choice of Lauren McFerran," Harkin said, calling McFerran "an incredibly talented lawyer with deep knowledge and strong character who will be a great asset to the Board."

McFerran is well known to the senators who are considering her nomination, having served as the longtime chief labor counsel for the HELP committee. She also worked for Harkin and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who will replace Harkin as HELP committee chairman, wants to weaken the NLRB – an agency that is crucial to working people in the nation – and has been coming up with ways to undermine it, including legislation that he and incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cooked up to create a perpetual impasse on the board.

Preferring a non-functioning NLRB, Republicans had not been allowing its vacancies to be filled, in a deliberate effort to cripple it. Block was one of the recess appointments that Obama made to fully staff the board for the first time in a decade. The fight wound up at the U.S. Supreme Court where its GOP majority justices ruled against Obama in NLRB v. Noel Canning. When Obama nominated Block again, this time to replace Schiffer, whose term ends in December, GOP senators took it as a deliberate affront.

McFerran, if confirmed in the Lame Duck session, could join the NLRB in time for its work to continue uninterrupted.