In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

18 Management Interests over Workers' Statutory Rights The Final Irrelevance of National Labor Policy? Accommodation and Conflict: Democratic Appointments to the NLRB Although Congress rejected union-sponsored labor law reform during Carter's one-term administration, the Carter White House was able to have a short-lived effect on the national labor policy through the appointment process. Democrats regained control of the Board when Carter named John Fanning chairman in April 1977 and, six months later, appointed NLRB executive secretary John Truesdale to replace Peter Walther, who had resigned. After that, Fanning, Jenkins, and Truesdale produced many rulings popularly associated with the Fanning Board. Betty Southard Murphy, who remained on the Board after being removed as chairman, and John Penello generally constituted a Board minority. The Fanning Board was in control for only a few years but long enough to be accused by the conservative Heritage Foundation and a future Board member of violating management's right to manage by adopting "an activist stance manifested by an anti-business pro-labor bias."! Although the Fanning Board majority issued some important decisions, particularly in the areas of employer interference with representation election campaigns, protected concerted activity , the scope of collective bargaining, and deferral to labor arbitration, they amounted to no more than a blip on a long-term policy trend from the Miller Board through the Reagan-Bush years of removing restraints on employer resistance to unionization while sharply curtailing the scope of collective bargaining and diminishing its importance. Carter got an earlier-than-expected chance to appoint a Board member when Peter Walther resigned in April 1977. Walther objected to what he called the "politicization" of the Board by certain of his Republican-appointed colleagues. At least one Board member other than Walther believed that after Carter's elec242 Management Interests over Workers' Rights 243 tion Murphy's opinions had been "pro union," apparently part of an attempt by Murphy to retain her chairmanship. Another former high-ranking Nixon appointee to the NLRB accused Murphy of being "too political" and of "brown nosing labor heavily" after the presidential election.2 Organized labor's leading candidate to replace Walter was Daniel Pollitt, University of North Carolina law professor and former special counsel to Frank McCulloch. Management was "scared to death of Pollitt," and the Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, and textile industry (with special memories of Darlington and 1.P. Stevens) lobbied key senators to discourage his selection. In Douglas Soutar's words, "it would have been too bad to tum the clock back to the first few years of the NLRB and those types."3 Employers realized they would not get one of their own. They also knew that Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall wanted to avoid a public confrontation over the appointment, which meant the Carter administration would push Pollitt only so far.4 Walther and Fanning strongly supported nominating John Truesdale , then NLRB executive secretary. Truesdale, fifty-six, was a long-term career professional who had joined the NLRB as a field examiner.s For employers, Truesdale was not as management oriented as Walther but was certainly acceptable , particularly when compared to Pollitt. Although Truesdale, management believed, could "end up a little liberal," he was conservative enough to "help move Fanning to the middle."6 Truesdale's appointment in August 1977 was in the tradition of many appointments to the NLRB, where as one scholar put it, "the President's incentive is to accommodate the interests of both sides, giving greater weight to the interests of the in group, and to arrive at solutions that divert neither attention nor resources from all other things the White House must do.m As a result of the bitter fight over labor law reform in 1978, however, mutual accommodation between business and organized labor on NLRB appointments gave way to mutual mistrust and hostility. Organized labor, frustrated and angered not only by the defeat of its legislative program but also by what it considered employers' unfair tactics in working against the bill, retaliated by adopting a confrontational approach to three other NLRB appointments at the very end of the Carter administration.8 The first controversy centered on the selection of a replacement for General Counsel John Irving, who left office in October 1979, one month before his term expired.9 Carter nominated William Lubbers for the job. Lubbers, fifty-five, a University of Wisconsin Law School graduate, had been with the Board for twenty-seven years, twenty...

Share