Topics: Legal Information, Union-Management Relations

Last week, I attended the American Bar Association’s Mid-Winter Meeting for the Committee on Development Under the Law of the NLRA in Clearwater, Florida.

William Cowen, the new National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel, was one of the featured speakers. Of course, he could not say too much, but GC Cowen did speak for over an hour. He was more candid than most government officials, which was appreciated by the attendees, who represent both the union and management side, as well as a number of NLRB officials and employees.

Here are some of the things he reported on that I thought many blog readers might be interested in, with a bit of my personal commentary:

1. GC Cowen has only been there a few weeks, so he is still figuring things out day-to-day.
2. GC Cowen’s view is that the NLRB is an executive agency and therefore he plans to follow the agenda set by the Executive Branch and the President of the United States. This means that things should get a lot more friendly for employers facing NLRB issues in the next four years.
3. Approximately 30 of approximately 1300 NLRB employees took the government's recent deferred resignation program. GC Cowen does not feel that will have a major impact.
4. According to GC Cowen, there has been no detailed analysis of the NLRB budget yet. The Board does not expect to get any increase in funding. From GC Cowen’s perspective, flat funding would be ideal, but he has no sense of where...

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