Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Senate on Friday confirmed two nominees to the National Labor Relations Board, securing a 3-1 Republican majority.
- Republican James Macy, a U.S. Department of Labor official, and Democrat David Prouty, were confirmed as part of a grouping of 74 nominations in a 51-47 vote. Macy will serve a term ending in August 2030, and Prouty, who will be serving a second term, will hold the role until August 2031.
- “The confirmations continue President Trump’s reshaping of the NLRB,” according to a Friday blog post by employer-side law firm Ogletree Deakins.
Dive Insight:
NLRB operated without a quorum for months after Trump’s controversial firing of Democrat Gwynne Wilcox in January 2025. The quorum was restored in December 2025 when the Senate confirmed Republicans James Murphy, a former career NLRB attorney, and Scott Mayer, former chief labor counsel at Boeing.
The board faced losing its quorum again as Prouty’s term was set to expire this month. “The timing of the new NLRB confirmations is significant in that it avoids a potential ‘quorum gap,’” Ogletree Deakins wrote.
The board operated with a “functioning quorum” before the latest confirmation, but the three-member Republican majority will now allow it “to overturn prior precedential decisions,” the law firm said.
“Long-standing Board tradition requires at least three affirmative votes to reverse extant precedent,” per Ogletree Deakins. NLRB still has one vacancy that Trump could fill.
The Associated Builders and Contractors in a Friday statement commended the confirmation of Macy and Prouty, noting that losing a quorum would have left NLRB “unable to issue decisions, creating additional uncertainty for the construction industry and the broader employer community.”
“A fully functioning NLRB is essential to reducing the growing case backlog and ensuring labor disputes are resolved in a timely and predictable manner,” Kristen Swearingen, ABC vice president of government affairs, said.
In addition to the NLRB confirmations, the Senate also confirmed economist Brett Matsumoto to a four-year term as DOL’s Commissioner of Labor Statistics.
