The United States Senate has narrowly confirmed former counsel to the Commissioner of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission Marvin Kaplan to one of two vacant seats on the National Labor Relations Board. Kaplan’s confirmations leaves one vacant seat on the five-member Board.

President Donald Trump has nominated management labor lawyer William Emanuel for

Attorneys Marvin Kaplan and William Emanuel will be nominated by President Donald J. Trump to fill the two openings on the five-member National Labor Relations Board, according to the Daily Labor Report. Trump plans to nominate Kaplan and Emanuel by June, following completion of their FBI background checks.

If Kaplan and Emanuel are confirmed,

The confirmation hearing for Andrew Puzder, President-elect Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, has been postponed from January 12 to the week of January 16, according to a report in Politico. The hearing will take place before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. The Committee is chaired by Senator Lamar Alexander

The House of Representatives voted 232-186 on March 19th to disapprove the new NLRB election rules slated to go into effect on April 14th. The Senate passed a similar resolution of disapproval on March 4th.

Under the Congressional Review Act, Congress has the authority to “disapprove” (and thus nullify) an agency rule. However, as with

President Barack Obama reportedly has withdrawn former-National Labor Relations Board member Sharon Block’s nomination to the NLRB to replace Nancy Schiffer, whose term expires on December 16, 2014.  Obama instead will nominate Lauren McFerran, chief labor counsel for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Block’s renomination earlier this year has met with significant

Labor law issues again have taken a leading role in Washington politics.  As reported on this blog recently, two controversial GOP-supported bills are currently before the House Education and Workforce Committee.  See, NLRA Amendments Introduced in Congress. While their passage is extremely unlikely, given the Democrat majority in the Senate, the issues addressed by

Politico.com is reporting that the Senate and the White House may be close to a deal on President Obama’s package of nominees to the NLRB.  Two of the nominees who are seen as the most pro-labor, Sharon Block and Richard Griffin, would be dropped and two other nominees substituted.  The deal also would include votes

Republican legislators have proposed amendments to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) that would ensure employees’ right to a secret ballot election to select a union and relax the burden of proof for an employer seeking to expand the union’s petitioned-for voting unit.

One bill, the “Secret Ballot Protection Act,” introduced in the U.S. House

The NLRB’s petition to the United States Supreme Court for review of Noel Canning is due April 25. The Supreme Court will be the most important battleground for resolution of the question whether President Barack Obama’s recess appointments of NLRB Members Sharon Block, Richard Griffin and former-Member Terence F. Flynn were constitutional.

Even after the