List of Chairs of the National Labor Relations Board

This is a list of Chairs of the National Labor Relations Board.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has five Members, each of whom serves for a five-year term. Terms are staggered so that one Member's term expires each year (although delays in nominations and confirmation, as well as the use of recess appointments, can upset this schedule). Members are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate. Traditionally, a majority of the board belongs to the President's political party. The President designates the Chair from one of the existing Members. The Chair serves at the pleasure of the President, and may be demoted without cause or warning at any time.

The Chair's powers are limited. The Chair, like other Board Members, has a chief legal counsel and a legal staff. Except for certain limited and purely administrative functions (such as being the recipient of appeals or Freedom of Information Act requests), one former NLRB Chair has said "the chairmanship—given the authority of the general counsel to appoint regional staff and recommend regional directors to the entire Board (not just to the chairman)—is more like a bully pulpit than a position of authority." The Chair does, however, work with the Office of Management and Budget to craft the NLRB's budget proposal to Congress, may propose to the Board changes to NLRB procedures and guidance manuals, and may propose that the Board engage in rulemaking.

From 1935 to 1953, it was customary for the Chair (like all Members of the NLRB) to be a neutral career government employee rather than an advocate of either labor unions or management. President Dwight Eisenhower's appointment of Guy Farmer in 1953 broke this two-decade-old tradition (Farmer was a management attorney). Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson both returned to the tradition of appointing neutral third parties to the position of Board Chair, but President Richard M. Nixon appointed a management-side attorney. The Board as a whole was under intense Congressional scrutiny from its inception until the 1960s. This ended in the 1960s and 1970s, but resumed in the 1980s. Subsequent appointments to the position of Chair have been heavily partisan and from either a strongly pro-union or pro-management position.

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