Biden to tap SEIU lawyer to serve on NLRB

President Biden announced Tuesday that he will nominate a top union lawyer to serve on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

David Prouty, general counsel for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Labor 32BJ, has been chosen to fill an upcoming vacancy on the five-member board. Prouty has held the general counsel position at SEIU, the nation’s largest labor union for property service workers with over 175,000 members, since 2018.

Before that, he was general counsel for the MLB Players Association and also worked for the labor union UNITE HERE, which is comprised of industrial and textile employees as well as ones from hotels and restaurants. 

Prouty would replace William Emanuel, a Trump nominee whose five-year term is set to expire at the end of August. 

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) applauded Prouty’s nomination to the board, touting his understanding of how the NLRB can benefit workers. 

“We are pleased that President Biden has nominated a person with such outstanding credentials to the National Labor Relations Board, and we look forward to seeing the NLRB restored to its statutory role of safeguarding employee rights and fairly adjudicating disputes. Prouty is the right person, at the right time, for this job,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said in a statement.

Biden also nominated a union lawyer, Gwynne Wilcox, to fill the vacant seat on the board in May. Wilcox is a partner at Levy Ratner, P.C., a labor and employment law firm, and she also serves as associate general counsel of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.

Both nominees need to be confirmed by the Senate and, if they are, Democrats would have control of the five-member board.

In one of his first moves as president in January, Biden fired the Trump-era NLRB general counsel, Peter Robb, months before his Senate-confirmed four-year term was slated to end.