Trump Picks Former House Panel Lawyer For Labor Board

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Publish Date:
June 19, 2017
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Bloomberg - BNA - Daily Labor Report
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Summary

President Donald Trump will nominate attorney Marvin E. Kaplan (R) to be a member of the National Labor Relations Board, the White House announced late June 19.

Trump also is set to select William J. Emanuel (R), a veteran labor lawyer at Littler Mendelson P.C., to join the board, a number of sources told Bloomberg BNA. The White House is expected to announce Emanuel’s nomination this week.

But William B. Gould, now a professor emeritus of law at Stanford University, expressed reservations about nominating Kaplan.

Gould, a Democrat who was chairman of the NLRB from 1994 to 1998, told Bloomberg BNA he doesn’t know Kaplan but that serving as a staff lawyer for House committees doesn’t provide the experience a board member needs at independent quasi-judicial agency.

Picking congressional staffers and veterans as NLRB nominees has become more common in recent years, Gould acknowledged, but he told Bloomberg BNA “appointments of that kind, whether by Democratic or Republican presidents, aren’t good.”

“Kaplan’s appointment is likely to politicize the Board on behalf of House Republicans whose mission has been to supplant the NLRB as expert agency, a role which Congress has given it since 1935, when its decisions displease them,” Gould said.

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