What started as an esoteric dispute over whether a Senate “pro forma” session can technically be considered “recess” morphed into a larger question of executive power when a federal appeals court rejected the Obama Administration’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. But the court went beyond the narrow dispute over pro forma sessions [...]

We can now see why the imminent Walmart strikes on Black Friday have spooked the company. They have engaged in a two-prong PR strategy, dismissing the strikes as being carried out by a small faction of its 1.4 million associates, while also seeking National Labor Relations Board reliefto block the strikes as illegal union-based activity. [...]

Walmart, trying to change the subject in advance of protests and strikes at the outset of the holiday shopping season, has filed an unfair labor practice charge against the United Food and Commercial Workers union, arguing that UFCW is illegally attempting to disrupt its business. A non-union coalition of Walmart workers called OUR Walmart has [...]

Terence Flynn, a Republican member of the National Labor Relations Board, who leaked documents to Republican confidants according to that agency’s inspector general, resigned on Sunday. Flynn’s resignation becomes effective July 24. Flynn had only been on the board since January, as a recess appointment of the President, along with two Democrats, giving the board [...]

The failure to pass better rules for forming labor unions during the 2009-2010 period has now shown its full costs. Yesterday, a federal appeals court blocked the more modest union election rules approved by the National Labor Relations Board, on the grounds that the NLRB did not have a quorum when it approved the rules. [...]

The House Republican position on President Obama’s recess appointments is hard to even express without laughing. GOP Congressmembers are actually saying that they oppose the appointments because Congress is not in recess – and as soon as they finish their vacation and get back to Washington, they’ll have something to say about that. I’ve heard [...]

I think we have found the unifying thread on the President’s recess appointments yesterday. He did not decide to make appointments on key financial regulatory positions, like OCC or FDIC or the Federal Reserve, and some worry that those nominees will now get blocked from confirmation as a result, though they are seen as uncontroversial. [...]

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer put out his rationale for the recess appointment of Richard Cordray, including some of the legal reasoning. Here are the facts: The Constitution gives the President the authority to make temporary recess appointments to fill vacant positions when the Senate is in recess, a power all recent Presidents have [...]

The National Labor Relations Board, in what could be one of its final acts before it goes dark due to a lack of a quorum, formally approved new rules that would accelerate union elections. Because there may not be a functional NLRB after January 1, however, there will be no immediate practical effect to this [...]

The recess appointment fight nominally only concerns Richard Cordray, the nominee to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Republicans want to block his confirmation because they stop the agency from gaining regulatory powers over non-bank financial institutions if they remain without a director. So they’re using the nomination fight as a proxy to force changes [...]

As is typical at the end of the year, Harry Reid attempted to clear out a backlog of uncontroversial Presidential appointments before the holiday break. But Mitch McConnell would not allow it. He wanted assurances, instead, that the President would not seek out any recess appointments during the break, and he objected to moving the [...]