Labor board back up to full count

last updated 8 January 2015

The Senate voted this week to fill all five seats on the National Labor Relations Board for the first time since 2008, bringing an end to months of delays by conservative lawmakers. Republicans had blocked two of Obama’s nominees to the board—which oversees private-sector union elections and referees workplace disputes—because of their pro-union pasts, and because the president had appointed them while Congress was on a break. Lawmakers agreed to the vote as part of a bipartisan deal made in July, after the Democratic majority threatened to change the Senate’s filibuster rules. As part of that deal, Obama withdrew two nominations and replaced them with two new nominees.