NLRB Unlikely to Use Rulemaking to Change Labor Law Precedent

The National Labor Relations Board signaled that it’s unlikely to use rulemaking to change labor standards while it lacks enough members to overturn precedential decisions.

The NLRB’s prior experiments with the regulatory process has shown “it doesn’t well-suit an adjudicatory agency,” member James Murphy said Wednesday at an American Bar Association conference in Hawaii.

Member Scott Mayer—who with Murphy constitute the NLRB’s Republican majority—didn’t comment on the issue. Member David Prouty, the sole Democrat on the board, called rulemaking a “tremendous time-suck.”

The NLRB declining to use rulemaking would deal a blow to a coalition of industry groups that asked ...