Former NLRB Chairman Edward B. Miller Passes Away

Edward B. Miller died on November 10, at the age of 84, after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease. Miller, a Nixon appointee, served as NLRB Chairman from June 1970 to December 1974.

I had the pleasure of observing Mr. Miller argue an NLRB case to a court of appeals back in 2000. He was quite impressive.

Mr. Miller's jurisprudence lives on. Recently, a Board majority, citing one of his dissents, overruled precedent and held that the Board will no longer presume that an employer's threat of plant closure was widely disseminated to unit employees. Crown Bolt, Inc., 343 NLRB No. 86 (2004) (citing General Stencils, Inc., 195 NLRB 1109 (1972) (Chairman Miller, dissenting)).

This obituary appears in the Chicago Tribune. A tribute to him, authored by former Chairman John Truesdale, appears on the website of the ABA's Section of Labor & Employment Law.

New and Improved NLRB Website

The NLRB has updated its website. The website allows anyone, after registering, to access an electronic docket of any case pending before the Board. For example, you can view the electronic docket for Midwest Generation, 13-CA-39643, by clicking here and inserting "Midwest Generation" in the "Case Name" box. I discussed the Board's decision in Midwest Generation in this post. In that case, the Board held that an employer did not violate the Act when it locked out full-term strikers while allowing non-strikers and crossovers to continue working. The Seventh Circuit refused to enforce that decision and remanded the case to the Board with an order to find that the partial lockout was unlawful. The electronic docket is interesting in that it shows that the Board initially authorized the General Counsel to ask the Solicitor General to file a cert petition. Evidently, that didn't work out. The Board never filed a cert petition, and it actually opposed the employer's cert petition. The Supreme Court ultimately declined to take the case.