The Federal Labor Relations Authority is now able to issue decisions again, since two members have been put in place, leaving only one vacancy on the three-member governing board.
The FLRA had been down to one member, Carol Waller Pope, since mid-July, when former chair Dale Cabaniss resigned. With only one member, the FLRA did not have a quorum to issue decisions, although it continued to receive arbitration, negotiability, representation and unfair labor practice cases, which have backed up. The situation had happened before: the authority had only one member for nearly a year over 1988-1989.
The new FLRA chair is the newly confirmed Thomas M. Beck, a former partner in the Jones Day law firm who specialized in civil litigation and labor and employment law. He was confirmed just before the Senate went into recess, along with the confirmation of Pope to serve a second term. Pope is a career federal employee originally nominated by President Clinton.
