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President Obama on Saturday announced that he was making recess appointments of 15 of his nominees whose confirmations have been blocked by Senate Republicans' refusal to allow votes on them -- and two appointees in particular could lead to a major change for higher education. Those appointees -- Craig Becker and Mark Pearce -- will restore a quorum to the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB has lacked a quorum throughout the Obama administration, leading to legal challenges to its right to decide cases. One of the major goals for academic labor for the Obama administration was to see a reversal of the 2004 NLRB decision that effectively shut down the unionization of graduate student teaching assistants at private universities. But labor groups have hesitated to bring a challenge to the ruling while the NLRB lacked a quorum. The leaders of private universities generally oppose unionization of graduate students.
