The U.S. Senate has confirmed President Trump’s nomination of management attorney Peter Robb to a four-year term as the new General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Mr. Robb succeeds Richard Griffin, a former union General Counsel and appointee of President Obama whose aggressive enforcement policies extended the reach of federal labor law well beyond its traditional limits.
Once Mr. Robb is sworn in, Republicans will have full control of the NLRB. He was nominated for the position by President Trump on September 15, 2017, and the relatively quick action taken by the Senate in confirming him as the NLRB’s new General Counsel signals that changing the direction of the NLRB is a Trump Administration priority.
The NLRB during the Obama Administration, and the GC’s office under the direction of Mr. Griffin, were especially aggressive in expanding the Board’s jurisdiction beyond its traditional role of resolving labor-management disputes to include targeting a wide variety of common sense employer policies and practices that have little direct relationship to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Given Mr. Robb’s prior experience as a management-side lawyer, we expect him to quickly rein in the Board’s overreach into these areas.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.