Maxwell, New NLRB Appointments: Change We Can Believe In

by Seth Michaels, Apr 27, 2009

Mary Beth Maxwell will be joining the Obama administration.

It bears repeating: Elections have consequences.

Great news from the White House, as three new appointments over the weekend show President Barack Obama’s commitment to improving workers’ lives and protecting their freedom on the job. Mary Beth Maxwell will head to the U.S. Department of Labor, while two experienced worker advocates—Craig Becker and Mark Pearce—have been nominated to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Maxwell, the executive director of American Rights at Work and a strong advocate for the Employee Free Choice Act, has been named as a senior adviser to Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and a member of Vice President Joe Biden’s Middle Class Task Force. She’ll bring to the administration a history of speaking out in support of workers and their freedom to bargain for a better life.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney offered congratulations to Maxwell on behalf of millions of workers who will benefit from her advocacy in the administration.

It is a great day for America’s working families who gain yet another strong advocate in the Obama Administration.

Mary Beth Maxwell has dedicated her career to fighting for workers’ rights and her appointment clearly spotlights the priority this administration puts on working men and women’s issues, especially in today’s economy. The union movement looks forward to continuing to work with her in her new role to create good-paying jobs, restore workplace standards and safety rules and reform our nation’s broken and outdated labor laws.

In addition to naming Maxwell to the task force, Obama has chosen two key allies of America’s working families to fill vacancies on the NLRB, the body that oversees the enforcement of our nation’s laws for protecting workers and their freedom to form unions. Becker and Pearce, two stronger worker advocates who have practiced and taught labor law for many years, will require confirmation by the U.S. Senate. When they’re confirmed, they’ll join new NLRB chair Wilma Liebman, an NLRB member Obama promoted to chair the board immediately upon taking office.

Becker, who serves as associate general council to the AFL-CIO and SEIU, is experienced in labor law as an appeals court clerk, a published scholar, a professor at the law schools of UCLA, Georgetown and the University of Chicago and is a practicing attorney before the Supreme Court.

Pearce, a founding partner of the Creighton, Pearce Johnson & Giroux law firm, has been a practicing employment lawyer and in 2008 was named to New York’s state Industrial Board of Appeals, a labor-law oversight body.

With Maxwell, Becker and Pearce’s appointments, Obama has shown his commitment to ensuring strong voices for workers have a place in his administration. It’s an encouraging sign of the change that working families across the country fought for in last year’s election.

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article |Comments (2)