Mark Gaston Pearce was named chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by President Barack Obama on August 27, 2011. Sworn in as a board member on April 7, 2010, he was confirmed by the Senate on June 22, 2010, for a term ending on August 27, 2013. As chairman, he succeeded Wilma B. Liebman, who served as NLRB chairman from January 20, 2009 until August 27, 2011.
Born in 1953 in Brooklyn, New York, Pearce graduated from Erasmus Hall High School in 1971. He earned a B.A. in Government at Cornell University in 1975 and a J.D. at the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School in 1978, where he served as president of that school’s chapter of the Black Law Students Association.
Admitted to the New York Bar in 1979, Pearce started his career at NLRB as a district trial specialist in the agency’s Buffalo Regional office, where he remained from September 1979 to November 1994. He left for private practice, co-founding the Buffalo, New York, law firm of Creighton, Pearce, Johnsen & Giroux, where he practiced union and plaintiff side labor and employment law from January 2002 to April 2010. By appointment of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Pearce served as a board member on the New York State Industrial Board of Appeals, which hears appeals of wage and hour decisions by the New York State Department of Labor, from 2008 to 2010.
Pearce has taught at Cornell University’s School of Industrial Labor Relations Extension, and is a fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. He is also adjunct faculty at Cornell University School of Industrial Labor Relations and is a member of Cornell Adjunct Faculty -Upstate, New York State United Teachers Local # 37-950, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFL-CIO). He has lectured and given Continuing Legal Education presentations for the American Bar Association, New York State Bar Association, the AFL-CIO, Cornell University and the National Labor Relations Board.
A Democrat, Pearce contributed $1,250 to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama. He is also an avid painter who has shown his work at galleries.
-Matt Bewig
Mark Gaston Pearce (Uncrowned Community Builders)
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