NLRB Appoints Ruth E. Burdick as Deputy Associate General Counsel in the Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation Branch

WASHINGTON, DC – Acting General Counsel Peter Sung Ohr has announced the appointment of Ruth E. Burdick as Deputy Associate General Counsel in the Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation Branch of the National Labor Relations Board. In that position, Ms. Burdick will oversee the Branch’s work in its representation of the Board in all cases for the enforcement or review of Board decisions and orders filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals, and the Branch’s work with the Office of the Solicitor General in handling the Board’s cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.  Ms. Burdick has been serving as Acting Deputy Associate General Counsel since May 2020.

Ms. Burdick joined the NLRB in 2000 as a briefing attorney in the Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation Branch.  She was later promoted to Supervisory Attorney in 2010, and to Deputy Assistant General Counsel in 2014.  Prior to coming to the NLRB, she began her legal career serving as Law Clerk to Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, worked as a Staff Attorney at the AFL-CIO’s General Counsel’s Office, and was an Associate in private practice.  During her tenure at the Agency, in 2007, she was detailed to Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s Labor Policy Office for the Senate HELP Committee.  Since 2018, Ms. Burdick has served as an Associate Editor of The Developing Labor Law.

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Ms. Burdick graduated with Honors from Mills College in 1993, and from UC Hastings College of the Law in 1996, where she served as Editor-In-Chief of the Constitutional Law Quarterly.  In 1997, she earned an LL.M. degree with Honors from Georgetown University Law Center with an emphasis in labor and employment law.  She is admitted to the California and D.C. Bars.

Acting General Counsel Ohr remarks, “Over the last twenty years, Ms. Burdick has performed exceptionally in all of her previous positions, and I have no doubt that she will serve exemplarily well in her new leadership role.”

Established in 1935, the National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal agency that protects employees, employers, and unions from unfair labor practices and protects the right of private sector employees to join together, with or without a union, to improve wages, benefits and working conditions.  The NLRB conducts hundreds of workplace elections and investigates thousands of unfair labor practice charges each year.