Changes Ahead.jpgYesterday the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) through Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce and Acting General Counsel Lafe E. Solomon announced the appointment of Terry A. Morgan as Regional Director in the Detroit Regional Office (Region 7) with a satellite office in Grand Rapids, MI. 

While the appointment of Ms. Morgan’s appointment is important for Michigan employers, it has and will be overshadowed by the attention given to President Obama’s recent recess appointments to the NLRB (Why Obama’s Recess Appointments to NLRB May Still Be “Good” For EmployersObama’s NLRB Appointments: Why the Rush?LXBN TV: Ballard Spahr’s Christopher Willis on Richard Cordray’s Recess Appointment As CFPB Director). 

The appointees are Democratic union lawyer Richard Griffin, Democratic Labor Department official Sharon Block and Republican NLRB lawyer Terence Flynn.

President Obama’s appointments returns the NLRB to its full slate of five members for the first time since August 2010. The NLRB previously lost its quorum when the term of Democrat Craig Becker—an earlier recess appointee—expired. Without a quorum, the board cannot rule on cases or create new regulations and this resulted in a backlog of undecided cases.  

Returning to Ms. Morgan, the NLRB press announcement describes her as follows:

Ms. Morgan received her undergraduate and JD degrees from University of Wisconsin in 1981 and 1988 respectively. She began her career in 1988 in the Agency’s Cleveland office (Region 8). She served as a field attorney in both Cleveland and Manhattan (Region 2). In 1997, she was promoted to a supervisory field attorney position in Manhattan where she served until 2004 when she was promoted to a Deputy Assistant General Counsel position in the Division of Operations-Management in 2004. In this position she has had oversight responsibility over a number of regional offices, most recently Baltimore (Region 5) and Cleveland. She will replace Regional Director Stephen Glasser who retired last year.

The NLRB is the federal agency that oversees employees’ rights to organize, supervises union elections, and decides disputes between U.S. private-sector employers and employees.

Hopefully, Ms. Morgan will continue Region 7’s practice of releasing, without charge, its publication called “Outreach,” which has been a good source of news and events within the Agency, as well as highlights in labor law and practice.