Washington, DC – On July 12, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee passed Gwynne Wilcox’s nomination out of committee without a hearing, ensuring Senators never had an opportunity to question Wilcox about her troubling tenure on the Board, including overturning long-standing precedent and ignoring the stakeholder community.

The following statement can be attributed to CDW Chair Kristen Swearingen:

“The Senate HELP Committee has chosen to approve Gwynne Wilcox’s nomination without asking her a single question about the radical policies this Board has pursued over the last two years. Wilcox and the Board are not being held accountable for their pursuit of their own ideological goals at the expense of the Board’s intended mission of remaining a neutral arbiter of federal labor law.

“The Board during Wilcox’s tenure has blatantly ignored multiple federal court decisions as well as concerns from other agencies. They have even abandoned their own long-standing precedent of requesting public input before issuing decisions or rulemakings that make significant policy changes.

“Considering this record, at the very least the Committee should have required Wilcox to come before them and be questioned about the Board’s direction. The Committee should also have required the Biden administration to pair her nomination with a Republican candidate in order to force the Board to abandon its partisan mission and return to common sense policymaking.

“CDW now urges the full Senate to reject Wilcox’s nomination.”

On July 11, CDW sent a letter to the Committee urging them to delay their vote on Wilcox’s nomination, so they can hold a hearing to question her on the actions the Board has taken while she has served and they can force the Biden administration to pair her nomination with a Republican candidate to fill the vacancy left by Republican Board member John Ring in December 2022. Our statement on the letter can be found here.