Former Union Counsel Said to be Next NLRB GC

It seems Democrats have found a way to break the dysfunctional political stalemate on the National Labor Relations Board by bringing in a new general counsel to replace acting GC Lafe Solomon.

Citing sources, the Huffington Post reports that former union general counsel Richard Griffin is expected to be offered the NLRB GC job.

Republicans had blocked Solomon?s confirmation to the job for over three years. They were outraged when, in his role as acting GC, he filed a complaint against The Boeing Company, which built a new plant and tried to move work on a new airplane from Washington State to anti-union South Carolina. Boeing compromised and the complaint was later dropped.

It was not immediately known what Solomon, a career NLRB attorney who started as a field examiner in Seattle in 1972, will do next if Griffin succeeds him.

The HuffPost said the appointment of Griffin as GC and the naming of two new NLRB members were part of the filibuster compromise reached in the Senate this week.

Griffin is one of two people originally named to the NLRB over a year ago by President Barack Obama as recess appointments. A federal court ruled the appointments illegal, but the Senate compromise appears to have resolved that sticky issue.

The White House said Tuesday it would nominate two new members to the board. They are Nancy Schiffer, a former AFL-CIO associate general counsel, and Kent Hirozawa, the current chief counsel to the chair of the labor board.

Griffin previously served as general counsel for the International Union of Operating Engineers, working his way up from assistant house counsel and associated general counsel; on the board of directors for the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee; and as a counsel to NLRB board members.

After his appointment in 2012, Fox News called Griffin the ?top lawyer for [a] union tainted by mob ties.? It said the heavy equipment operators union was ?tainted over the years by mob connections and a history of corruption.?

But Fox did not accuse Griffin personally of any wrongdoing.

The job of NLRB general counsel is independent from the board. The GC is responsible for the investigation and prosecution of unfair labor practice cases and for the general supervision of the NLRB field offices in the processing of cases.

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Source: http://www.law.com/corporatecounsel/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202611485722&rss=rss_cc

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