Ogletree Deakins' Traditional Labor Relations Practice Group is pleased to announce the publication of the winter 2018 issue of the Practical NLRB Advisor. In the issue, we examine how the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is moving forward after a slow start during the Trump administration's first year in office—in which it took nearly nine months to realize a short-lived Republican majority.

With the end of former chairman Philip Miscimarra's term in December, the Board membership was reduced to four who are evenly split along political lines. While the White House has recently announced the nomination of John F. Ring to fill the all-important fifth Board seat, due to the current administration's comparatively poor record on seating nominees, his confirmation might still be far off. With an even-numbered and ideologically divided Board, no one expects any significant upcoming changes in the Board's decisional law. The recent past, however, illustrates how significant the filling of that single open Board seat could be.

This issue of the Practical NLRB Advisor reviews that recent past by examining the activity of the Board during the three-month Republican majority that ended with Miscimarra's term. That period was one of considerable productivity and significant change that witnessed the reversal of some of the Obama Board's most controversial decisions. The Board's actions that we review in this issue are not only of great significance in themselves, but also as harbingers of the future course of the Board.

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