The NLRB in the Partisan Era
By 
Roosevelt’s advisers intended for the NLRB to be a non-partisan agency; it drew most of its early appointees from government workers. Representing business, labor, and the public equally was in fact a prime goal of many New Deal agencies. The NLRB routinely ruled in favor of unions during these years, leading to conservative members of Congress introducing bills to eliminate the agency. One bill to do so passed the House 258-129 in 1940 before Roosevelt pressured the Senate to kill it. Even with the aim of nonpartisanship, for corporations and conservative politicians, the sheer existence of the agency was an attack on corporate rights.
Roosevelt’s vision of a non-partisan board began to slip during the Eisenhower years, however, when the first member of the business community was appointed. Corporations continued to look to the state to represent its interests over that of workers, even if it had far less power than it did before the New Deal. Unions responded by noting that no unionist had ever served on the NLRB. But corporate America had never accepted the legitimacy of unions, particularly not as an equal counterpart. The Kennedy and Johnson Administration soon after reinstated the tradition of appointing members with no ties to either unions or management. This was, however, short-lived as another Republican, Richard Nixon, would, again, see the board as a partisan agency and name management appointees. But, compared to today, this remained relatively muted through the 1970s.
The modern era of the truly partisan NLRB began in earnest with Ronald Reagan’s first appointee, who was a union-busting management consultant. This was followed later on by a protégé of the staunchly anti-union North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, who had created and distributed both anti-union videos and pamphlets. This broke the façade of neutrality at the NLRB; the Reagan Administration had simultaneously been seeking to gut labor regulations across the board. Bill Clinton was the first President to name union representatives to the NLRB; he appointed three union lawyers, evening out the score while continuing to entrench partisanship. George W. Bush later tilted things sharply back to the right.
Guess what. That partisanship ain’t going away any time soon. And so it becomes absolutely required for organized labor to support Democrats in elections to ensure the functionality of labor law. This is not a good thing in the long run. But in the short term it absolutely makes sense.