William Emanuel is an American lawyer and government official who formerly served as a member of the National Labor Relations Board.

[1] His clients have included trade associations, hospitals, school districts, and transportation, logistics, and manufacturing companies.

[4] According to The National Law Review, the National Labor Relations Board is "likely to consider a number of significant legal issues once the vacancies are filled, including the NLRB's test for determining whether joint employer relationships exist, the standards for evaluating whether handbooks and work rules interfere with employees' rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), appropriate units for collective bargaining, the question of whether graduate students and research assistants are employees under the NLRA with the right to collective bargaining and a host of other decisions from the past eight years that more expansively interpreted the NLRA.

"[5] In February 2018, ProPublica reported that the NLRB Inspector General is investigating whether Emanuel violated government ethics rules.

[6] In December 2017, the NLRB had voted 3–2 to reverse its August 2015 determination that franchising involves joint employment.