Senate Rejects McFerran's Confirmation as Labor Board Chair
The U.S. Senate rejected holding a confirmation vote on for Lauren McFerran to serve a third term as chairperson of the National Labor Relations Board.
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| Lauren McFerran |
The Senate voted 50-49 against holding the confirmation vote on President Joe Biden’s nomination of McFerran. Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, both Democrats who left their party during Biden's term and did not seek new terms in November.
The NLRB oversees labor disputes, supervises union elections, and has the power to investigate unfair labor practices. Business and labor groups fiercely contest the partisan breakdown of the board as it sets the agenda and determines how readily the agency uses its power to investigate and enforce labor laws.
McFerran’s nomination had faced strong opposition among business groups and trade organizations, as well as among Republicans who cited recent NLRB decisions and rules that they say favored unions.
Had she been confirmed for another five-year term, it would have provided a Democratic majority on the NLRB for the first two years of the incoming Trump administration. Trump will likely be able to nominate a replacement.
“Under McFerran’s leadership, the NLRB has issued decisions and expanded interpretations of the National Labor Relations Act that have been rejected by the business community, Congress and federal courts,” said Kristen Swearingen, ABC vice president of legislative & political affairs.
She referred to McFarren’s policies as being “harmful” and said the process to nominate her was “flawed.”
“Under McFerran’s leadership, the NLRB has issued decisions and expanded interpretations of the National Labor Relations Act that have been rejected by the business community, Congress and federal courts,” Swearingen said, specifically citing the NLRB’s joint employer standard, which was nullified by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in March. As proposed, the standard would have altered existing contractor and subcontractor relationships in the construction industry.
“President Joe Biden nominated NLRB Chair Lauren McFerran to serve a third term in May, and this move threatened Democratic control of the Board through August 2026,” Swearingen said. “Now, that will not happen because, thankfully, Senate Republicans and Democrats recognized her policies are harmful and that the confirmation process was flawed.”
Meanwhile, labor unions decried the vote. Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest consortium of labor unions, said the senators who rejected McFarren’s nomination “voted against the working people of this country” and warned that the incoming Trump administration would direct the NLRB to side with management over workers.
“Make no mistake: This vote had nothing to do with stopping Chair McFerran’s renomination and everything to do with reversing generations of progress workers have made toward building a fairer and more just economy,” Shuler said.
Democratic lawmakers, like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., took a dim view of the vote with some directing their anger directly at Manchin and Sinema.
“It is deeply disappointing, a direct attack on working people, and incredibly troubling that this highly qualified nominee — with a proven track record of protecting worker rights — did not have the votes,” Schumer said in a statement.
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