On July 9, 2009, President Obama announced the nomination of Brian E. Hayes, Republican labor policy director for the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, to the National Labor Relations Board and sent his nomination to the Senate, along with those of two previously-announced Democratic nominees, Craig Becker and Mark Pearce. If approved, the nominations, for three staggered terms, will fill longstanding vacancies on the Board.

Hayes is an experienced labor and employment management-side practitioner who, in addition to his work in the Senate, has taught labor, arbitration, and employment classes as an adjunct faculty member at Western New England College School of Law. Hayes previously served as counsel to the NLRB chairman and clerked for the NLRB’s chief administrative law judge.

Partisan gridlock between the Democratic Senate and the Bush Administration led to the three Board vacancies from December 31, 2007 to the present  Since that time, the Board has operated with two members, an arrangement that has been found invalid by the D.C. Circuit in Laurel Baye Healthcare v. NLRB, No. 08-1162, slip op. (D.C. Cir. May 1, 2009), but upheld by three other circuits.