President Bush Makes Recess Appointments to the NLRB

On January 4, President Bush recess appointed Ronald E. Meisburg as the General Counsel and Peter N. Kirsanow as a Member of the NLRB. The President had nominated Meisburg and Kirsanow for these positions in July and November 2005, respectively. Both of those nominations have been referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, as was the President's April 2005 nomination of Dennis P. Walsh to serve as a Member of the Board. The President declined to recess appoint Walsh.

The recess appointment of Kirsanow is significant. With three Republican Members now on the Board (for the first time since December 2004), the Bush Board now has the potential to overrule Clinton-Board precedent. The Board has had a three-Member Republican majority during only approximately two years of President Bush's five years in office.

The recess appointments follow quickly on the heels of an article in the Wall Street Journal authored by the president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Mark Mix. In the December 31 article, Mix urged the White House "to get off the dime and install an NLRB majority" to address the Dana/Metaldyne cases, among others, free from the constraint of institutional adherence to precedent.

Will the appointments satisfy Ross Runkel ?