As one of his many day-one initiatives, President Trump made his first change to the National Labor Relations Board by naming Marvin E. Kaplan as its new chairman.
Kaplan is no newcomer to the board, or to leading it. He was initially appointed to the NLRB by Trump during his first term in August 2017, and that December he served as Chairman of the board until April 2018. He was reconfirmed by the Senate for another term of 5 years, which is set to expire this August.
In a statement, Kaplan called the new announcement “an honor and privilege” and thanked his predecessor, Lauren McFerran, whose term on the board ended December 16 last year, for her service.
The new chairman is, for now, the lone Republican on the NLRB. The five-person board has two vacancies, with the remaining two seats filled by Gwynne Wilcox and David Prouty, both Biden appointees. Once the Senate confirms two as-yet-unnamed new members, the NLRB will have a 3-2 majority Republican split.
The NLRB also has a general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, whose four-year term is due to end in July. When President Biden took office in 2020, he took the unusual step of dismissing Trump’s NLRB general counsel on his first day in office. As of January 22, Trump has yet to do the same by dismissing Abruzzo.
Trump’s second term with the NLRB may be one to watch for policy changes from Trump’s first term in office. While the NLRB under the first Trump administration mainly limited the scope of protected union activity, in keeping with party norms, Trump’s second election campaign and nomination picks suggest at least an outward warming towards certain unions. In particular, Trump’s current nominated pick to lead his Labor Department, Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon, was notably a supporter of the PRO Act expanding workers’ rights to organize.
