On August 5, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the establishment of the National Labor Board, under the auspices of the NRA, to implement the collective bargaining provisions of Section 7(a).

Its decisions in the automobile, newspaper, textile, and steel industries proved so volatile that Roosevelt himself often removed these cases from the board's jurisdiction.

Senator Robert F. Wagner (D – NY) subsequently pushed legislation through Congress to give a statutory basis to federal labor policy that survived court scrutiny.

[36] Some of the evidence the committee used was provided by the Economic Division,[37] and the investigation proved critical for a time in defending the agency from business and congressional attack.

The Justice Department and NLRB legal staff wanted the Supreme Court to rule as quickly as possible on the constitutionality of the NLRA.

[39] Afterward, Madden continued to strategically guide the NLRB's legal efforts to strengthen the federal courts' view of the NLRA and the board's actions.

In June 1938, the House Un-American Activities Committee (led by Chairman Martin Dies Jr. [D-TX]) heard testimony from AFL leader John P. Frey, who accused Madden of staffing the NLRB with communists.

[42] The allegations were true, in at least one case: Nathan Witt, the NLRB's executive secretary and the man to whom Madden had delegated most administrative functions, was a member of the Communist Party of the United States.

[51] In an attempt to defuse the legislative crisis, Madden fired 53 staff and forced another five to resign, and decentralized the NLRB's trial process to give regional directors and field agents more authority.

[60][61][62] Although the Smith committee's investigation proved critical, the disestablishment of the Economic Division was due to many reasons—both internal and external to the NLRB, and only some of which involved allegations of communist infiltration.

[63] The Division was eliminated for all kinds of reasons which had nothing to do with the merits and importance of its work: political pressures and maneuverings, jealousy and empire building between and among lawyers and economists inside the Board, opposition to leftist ideologies, a personal attack on the Chief Economist, David Saposs, and a mighty hostility to the administrative process.The loss of the Economic Division was a major blow to the NLRB.

It had a major tactical impact: Economic data helped the NLRB fulfill its adjudicatorial and prosecutorial work in areas such as unfair labor practices (ULPs), representation elections, and in determining remedial actions (such as reinstatement, back pay awards, and fines).

[65] The loss also left the board dependent on the biased information offered by the parties in dispute before it, leading to poor decision-making and far less success in the courts.

"[68] The Economic Division was critical to a long-range NLRB process to lead to the long-term evolution of industrial labor relations in the U.S., but that goal had to be abandoned.

It also left the board largely unable to engage in rulemaking, forcing it to make labor law on an inefficient, time-consuming case-by-case basis.

[68] Lacking an economic division to give it ammunition to fight with Millis deliberately made the NLRB dependent on Congress and the executive branch for its survival.

The act also enumerated new employer rights, defined union-committed ULPs, gave states the right to opt out of federal labor law through right-to-work laws, required unions to give an 80-days' strike notice in all cases, established procedures for the president to end a strike in a national emergency, and required all union officials to sign an anti-Communist oath.

[90] In October 1947, the NLRB overruled him, which meant that top officers of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) would not have to sign an anti-Communist oath per the Taft–Hartley Act.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that state loyalty oath legislation violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

[101][102][103] On December 28, 2007, just before the board lost its quorum, the four members agreed to delegate their authority to a three-person panel per the National Labor Relations Act.

[101][102][105][full citation needed][106] In September 2009, the Justice Department asked the U.S. Supreme Court to immediately hear its appeal from the Seventh Circuit's decision in New Process Steel, L.P. v. NLRB and settle the dispute, given the high stakes involved.

[117] Former U.S. attorney general Edwin Meese stated that in his opinion, since the appointments were made when the Senate was "demonstrably not in recess", they represented "a constitutional abuse of a high order.

"[118] On January 12, 2012, the U.S. Justice Department released a memo stating that appointments made during pro forma sessions are supported by the Constitution and precedent.

[123] On July 30, 2013, the Senate confirmed all five of Obama's nominees for the NLRB: Kent Hirozawa, Harry I. Johnson III, Philip A. Miscimarra, Mark Gaston Pearce and Nancy Schiffer.

[125] On June 26, 2014, in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Obama's recess appointments to the NLRB in 2013 were unconstitutional, affirming the D.C.

[130] In 2024, SpaceX, Amazon, and Trader Joe's argued in various court filings that the NLRB was unconstitutional by the theory that it violates separation of powers and due process.

On the other hand, in those parts of the private sector its jurisdictional standards are low enough to reach almost all employers whose business has any appreciable impact on interstate commerce.

[144] Unions had wished for Robb to be replaced so that previous agency procedure could be restored; supporters of the firing argued that it was legal, citing the recent Supreme Court decision in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020).

[145] On January 25, 2021, President Biden appointed Peter Sung Ohr, a veteran employee of the NLRB, to serve as acting general counsel.

[157] President Trump announced on March 2, 2020, that he would renominate Republican Marvin Kaplan and Democrat Lauren McGarity McFerran to seats on the board.