President Trump, AFL-CIO to battle over National Labor Relations Board appointments

GINGER ADAMS OTIS 

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, July 20, 2017, 5:00 AM

Another big battle is brewing between President Trump and organized labor — this time over his picks for the National Labor Relations Board.

On Wednesday, a Senate committee gave the greenlight to Republicans Marvin Kaplan and William Emanuel — Trump’s appointees for two vacant spots on the NLRB.

Both lawyers have a proven track record of fighting against unions — and the AFL-CIO has already voiced its opposition to their nominations.

If approved by the full Senate, Kaplan and Emanuel will change the five-person NLRB majority from Democrat to Republican.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted 12-11 along party lines to send Kaplan and Emanuel to the floor for a full vote.

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said in a statement after the vote that the NLRB had been too favorable to unions under President Obama.

“By returning the composition of the National Labor Relations Board from a partisan operation to one that will look out for both hardworking Americans and job creators, we are taking another step toward helping restore America’s economy,” Isakson said in a statement.

Kaplan is now the chief counsel for the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

Emanuel is an attorney in California with Littler Mendelson, and works on labor and employment matters. He’s represented clients before the NLRB.

He’s also represented business groups that want to change California state law because they say they allow unions to trespass on their property.

If approved, Kaplan and Emanuel will join existing NLRB members Philip Miscimarra, a Republican and the chairman, and Democrats Mark Gaston Pearce and Lauren McFerran.

In coming months the NLRB is expected to weigh-in on several issues of importance to workers and unions — and possibly overturn some key Obama-era decisions.

The decisions that could be rolled back include a ruling that gave graduate students at private universities the right to join a union; a ruling that helped small groups of workers form a union within a larger company; a ruling that made it easier to hold companies responsible for labor violations committed by its contractors and a rule that sped-up the timetable for unionization votes. Business groups oppose the faster election process, arguing it denies employers time to make their case against joining a union.

The AFL-CIO on Tuesday sent a letter to the Senate outlining its objections to having Kaplan and Emanuel on the NLRB.

“After reviewing their records and statements at their confirmation hearing, the AFL-CIO has concluded that we must oppose these nominees and urge the Senate to reject these nominations,” the letter said.

Neither Kaplan or Emanuel in the past or in their presentations to the Senate committee demonstrated a willingness to uphold the NLRB’s basic mission of protecting workers rights, the AFL-CIO wrote.

The letter cited Emanuel’s track record of only representing employers — and the union-busting history of the law firm where works — as well as his admission at his confirmation hearing that he has never once taken on the case of a worker or a union.

For Kaplan, the letter detailed his lack of labor law experience, noting that his only background is in drafting policies to weaken worker protections in the National Labor Relations Act.

“In recent years, some in Congress and in the business community have launched relentless attacks on the NLRB and sought to get key NLRB decisions and actions overturned. Kaplan and Emanuel have been part of these attacks, and they said nothing at the confirmation hearing to distance themselves from these attacks or suggest that they would bring a less hostile, and more pro-NLRA view to their work,” the AFL-CIO letter added.

“Nor did either nominee make adequate commitments to recuse from cases and issues where there is real concern, based on their prior work and writings, that they have prejudged the issue and would not approach it with an open, unbiased mind,” it concluded.