On April 24, 2009, President Obama announced he intends to nominate Craig Becker and Mark Pearce to the National Labor Relations Board (”NLRB”). The five member Board decides cases under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

Upon confirmation by the Senate, Becker and Pearce, together with longtime Board-member and current Chairperson Wilma Liebman, will comprise a Democratic working majority. The NLRB has operated with only two members, Liebman and Republican Peter Schaumber, since January 2008 as a result of a deadlock between former-President Bush and Senate Democrats. President Obama has not yet announced who he intends to select for the fifth, and final position, on the Board.

Becker currently serves as the Associate General Counsel to the AFL-CIO and the SEIU. Becker has practiced labor law for the past 27 years and has taught at the UCLA, University of Chicago, and Georgetown Law Schools. Becker has argued labor and employment cases before the United States Supreme Court and multiple federal courts of appeal and previously clerked for the Honorable Donald P. Lay, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. A summa cum laude graduate of Yale College in 1978 and Yale Law School in 1981, Becker was an Editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Pearce is a union-side labor lawyer and founding partner of the law firm Creighton, Pearce, Johnsen & Giroux in Buffalo, New York and has practiced union-side labor and employment law before multiple state and federal agencies, including the NLRB, and the state and federal courts. Pearce is a Fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and has taught at Cornell University. In 2008, Pearce was appointed to serve as a Board Member on the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals, a state labor board. Pearce has previously practiced labor and employment law at Lipsitz, Green, Fahringer, Roll, Salisbury & Cambria LLP and worked as an attorney and District Trial Specialist for the NLRB in Buffalo, NY. Pearce received his J.D. from State University of New York, and his B.A. from Cornell University.

The White House has not yet indicated when President Obama’s final nominations will be announced.