By Daniel Wiessner
(Reuters) -President Donald Trump has moved to install a Republican majority at the federal board that hears private-sector labor disputes and oversees union elections, which has been paralyzed by his unprecedented firing of a Democratic member.
The White House sent the nominations of Scott Mayer, chief labor counsel at Boeing Co, and James Murphy, a career lawyer at the National Labor Relations Board, to the U.S. Senate on Wednesday.
The five-member board has lacked a quorum of three members and has been unable to rule in hundreds of pending cases since Trump in January fired NLRB Member Gwynne Wilcox, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden.
It was the first time since the board was created in 1935 that a member had been removed.
The U.S. Supreme Court in May allowed Wilcox’s removal pending the outcome of her legal challenge, which could set an important precedent on the president’s ability to remove members of agencies designed to be independent from the White House.
The board is also facing a series of lawsuits, including cases by Amazon.com and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, claiming its structure and in-house enforcement proceedings violate the U.S. Constitution.
The White House, the NLRB, Boeing, and Murphy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
If confirmed, Mayer and Murphy would join the board’s acting chair, Republican Marvin Kaplan, and Democrat David Prouty.
The NLRB hears cases involving illegal labor practices, including interference with union organizing, and decides disputes involving union elections. The board, which by tradition has no more than three members from one party, can adopt rules interpreting federal labor law but typically sets new policies through decisions in individual cases.
Without a quorum, the board cannot review decisions by the agency’s administrative judges, rendering them unenforceable. Unions and worker advocates have said the hobbling of the board has made it impossible to force some employers to cease even egregious and blatant legal violations, such as refusing to bargain and firing union supporters.
A Republican majority is expected to roll back many decisions issued during the Biden administration that were seen as favoring unions and heavily criticized by business groups.
That includes a 2023 ruling that created a path to unionize workers outside of the secret-ballot election process for the first time in 50 years, and a decision in a case involving Amazon.com that prohibits employers from requiring attendance at meetings to discourage unionizing.
Mayer has been chief legal counsel at Boeing since 2022 and previously worked at InterContinental Hotels Group, MGM Resorts International, and Aramark, according to his profile on networking site LinkedIn. Boeing faced a bitter seven-week strike from some U.S. factory workers last year, which ended when workers approved a new union contract in November.
Murphy has worked at the NLRB since 1974, when he was hired as a student law clerk, according to the agency. He has served as counsel to dozens of NLRB members, including Kaplan, the current acting chair.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Sonali Paul)
