Donald L. Dotson (born October 8, 1938) is an American attorney and politician who served as the chairman of the National Labor Relations Board from 1983 to 1987. He was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and approved by the United States Senate. In addition, he also worked as counsel for several corporations and served as an assistant secretary in the Department of Labor.
Dotson was born in Rutherford County, North Carolina, and graduated from both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University. In the 1960s, he served in the United States Navy. Following his post-secondary education, he worked as an attorney at law for the NLRB before becoming counsel for several companies from 1973 to 1981. In 1981, President Reagan appointed him as an assistant secretary at the Department of Labor and, the following year, nominated him for the chairmanship of the NLRB.
During his tenure, Dotson was noted for taking a more pro-management and anti-union stance than previous chairmen and reversed several earlier board rulings. He also was involved in several controversies, including the accumulation of a large backlog of cases and changes to the quasi-independent position of the board's general counsel. According to news sources, both board member Patricia Diaz Dennis and Teamsters President Jackie Presser sought to have the Reagan administration oust him, though unsuccessfully. At the end of his term, he was offered a position at the law firm of Keck, Mahin & Cate.
Early life and career Donald L. Dotson was born in Rutherford County, North Carolina, on October 8, 1938. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1960 with a Bachelor of Arts. From 1960 to 1965, he served in the United States Navy, from which he was honorably discharged with a rank of lieutenant commander. Following this, he attended the Wake Forest University School of Law, graduating with a Juris Doctor in 1968.
Following his education, Dotson worked as an attorney at law. Beginning in 1968, Dotson served as an attorney in the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) of the federal government of the United States. The NLRB is an independent agency that enforces federal labor laws. Among other things, the board, which consists of five members, oversees labor union representation elections and, per The New York Times, serves as a "referee" in disputes between management, workers, and unions. He worked in this position until 1973, during which time he also served as the president of the local union representing NLRB employees. From 1973 to 1975, he worked as counsel for the Westinghouse Electric Corporation and its subsidiaries on matters regarding labor. He served in the same position for several other companies, including Western Electric from 1975 to 1976 and Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel from 1976 to 1981. By 1981, he had obtained membership in multiple bar associations, including the American Bar Association, the North Carolina Bar Association, and the Pennsylvania Bar Association.
Department of Labor
While working for Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, a member of President Ronald Reagan's administration asked Dotson if he would be interested in being nominated for a position on the NLRB, which he declined. However, he later accepted an offer for nomination to a position in the Department of Labor, saying he did so because it "sounded challenging". At the time, he was a member of the Democratic Party, but he changed his political party affiliation to the Republican Party before moving to Washington, D.C. On April 17, 1981, President Ronald Reagan announced his intention to nominate Dotson as an assistant secretary of labor for labor management relations. The nomination was received by the Senate on June 2 and, on July 8, he was confirmed for the position via unanimous consent. The Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources did not hold any formal hearings pertaining to his nomination, with journalist Pete Earley attributing this to his view as a "noncontroversial nominee".
During his time at the department, Dotson worked on enforcing the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. According to Earley, Dotson "dramatically increased" the number of unions that experienced an audit.
NLRB chairmanship
Nomination On November 22, 1982, a spokesperson for President Reagan announced that he would be nominating Dotson and attorney Patricia Diaz Dennis for memberships on the NLRB. Specifically, Dotson would be replacing John Flanning as the board's chairman. Dotson served as a replacement for John Van de Water, whose nomination had been blocked by the Labor and Human Resources Committee. Speaking later of his nomination, Dotson said that he had reluctantly accepted it after it became clear that Van de Water would not be approved by the Senate. On November 24, the AFL-CIO said it would be opposing Dotson's nomination because he was "biased in favor of management". AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland sent a letter to the Senate wherein he expressed "grave reservations" of Dotson. The Senate received Dotson's nomination on November 29, but this nomination failed the following month. However, in January 1983, the Senate received the same nomination. On February 17, the Labor and Human Resources Committee approved his nomination via voice vote, and he was confirmed by the Senate at large via unanimous consent that same day. His term, which began on March 7, was to run until December 16, 1987. He replaced John C. Miller, a recess appointment, as the board's chairman.
1983
Changes to the general counsel's office According to Earley, the NLRB became "enveloped in controversy" over the first three months of Dotson's chairmanship. On May 4, 1983, the NLRB announced that it would be instituting some changes designed to strip the board's general counsel—a quasi-independent position within the agency—of most of the powers that the position had assumed since 1955. These changes would give Dotson direct control over the firing, hiring, and promotions of the board's attorneys and place the board's solicitor in charge of appeals. At the time, Hugh L. Reilly was the board's solicitor, having previously worked under Dotson at the Department of Labor. Several members of Congress and officials from labor unions criticized this move, with Earley calling Reilly a "target of controversy" due in part to his work as a lawyer for the conservative National Right to Work Committee.
Rumors circulated because of the changes that Dotson was planning a purge of liberals from the agency. Under Dotson's chairmanship, Republican Party members controlled the board, while the general counsel, who had been appointed by President Jimmy Carter, was a member of the Democratic Party. In response, Dotson issued a memorandum denying that the moves had been political in nature. Despite this, tensions increased between the board and its attorneys, with the professional association representing the agency's attorneys filing a formal complaint against Dotson and requesting that he apologize to attorneys he had criticized as "arrogant" and "cocky".
In mid-May, Reilly was involved in a controversy after a deputy assistant secretary of labor requested his temporary return to the department for assistance on some work within his area of expertise. This request was made without the knowledge or approval of the department's secretary, Raymond J. Donovan, who blocked the move and, through a spokesperson, expressed concerns about a potential "conflict of interest" arising from Reilly's involvement with both the department and the NLRB. Dotson issued a public statement on May 19 where he dismissed news reports that Reilly's move back to the department had been at his suggestion as a way to defuse criticism of the NLRB.
On June 15, Dotson was questioned in a congressional hearing before the House of Representatives regarding the board's reorganization of the general counsel's office. He said that the reorganization had occurred because the agency's attorneys had misrepresented the board's opinions to appellate courts and had engaged in "high-handed" and "sleazy" conduct, though fellow board member Howard Jenkins Jr. disagreed, saying that he could only recall six cases out of the last 40,000 that the NLRB had been involved with where an attorney may have misrepresented the board. Dotson received criticism from several Democratic House members, including Bill Clay and Barney Frank, but was defended by Republican Steve Bartlett. Also during the hearing, Clay and Frank discussed a situation where Dotson had allowed Reilly to serve as counsel in a case involving the Communications Workers of America that was financed by the National Right to Work Committee. Dotson defended Reilly's involvement, though he eventually withdrew from the case. Also in mid-June, 650 members of the District of Columbia Bar who practiced labor law said that Dotson's description of the general counsel's staff was "unwarranted" and "not based upon ... experience".
On June 29, another congressional hearing was held to discuss the changes to the general counsel's office, which featured testimony from Reilly. During this hearing, Reilly said that Dotson had begun discussing the reorganization plan with him around January or February, contradicting a previous statement from Dotson that he had not been the driver behind the reorganization. This was supported by statements from two of the board's other members, both Republicans—Jenkins and Robert Hunter—who said that there had been discussions on the plan about a month before its May announcement. By late June, Dotson said that he was in discussions with General Counsel William A. Lubbers about the powers he would still have following the reorganization.
Case backlog On November 2, 1983, the United States House Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations, headed by Representative Frank, was held to discuss the backlog of cases at the NLRB. In testimony, Dotson said that the board had a backlog of 290 union election cases and 1,291 unfair labor practice cases, representing the largest backlog in the agency's history. Also during the hearing, several union officials testified, with some saying that there had been delays of up to two years on NLRB decisions. Dotson said the delays were primarily due to the high turnover rate among board members, as between December 1979 and September 1983, the board had a full five members only fifty percent of the time and had operated with only three members for seven months. As a result, decisions became delayed due to a long-standing custom of not ruling on major decisions without a full board. At the time, the board had a vacancy following Jenkins's retirement in August, and President Reagan had yet to nominate a replacement. Journalist Drew Von Bergen quoted Representative Frank as saying that he was "convinced ... that this thing (the NLRB system) has nearly broken down". By February 1984, the backlog had grown to about 1,700 cases in total. Over the course of 1981, the board had made decisions in 880 cases, compared to an annual average of about 1,700 during the administration of President Carter. Per journalist Steven Greenhouse, some union officials alleged that the board's delays had been an intentional pro-management move, as many of the pending cases concerned charges of unfair firings.
1984
Alleged anti-union bias