Press Release - President Biden Announces a Presidential Emergency Board, Names Members

WASHINGTON – Today, President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order creating a Presidential Emergency Board to help resolve an ongoing dispute between the New Jersey Transit Rail and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET). The appointment of the Board is required under the Railway Labor Act because a party to the dispute has requested a Board.

The Presidential Emergency Board will provide a structure that allows the two sides to attempt to resolve their disagreements. In the 60 days following its establishment, the Presidential Emergency Board will obtain final offers for settlement of the dispute from each side, and then produce a report to the President that selects the offer that the Board finds to be the most reasonable. The Board's report is not binding, but the party whose offer is not selected would be prohibited by law from receiving certain benefits if a work stoppage subsequently occurs.

President Biden also announced that he intends to appoint the following members to Presidential Emergency Board No. 251:

• Elizabeth C. Wesman, Chair, Presidential Emergency Board No. 251
• Barbara C. Deinhardt, Member, Presidential Emergency Board No. 251
• Lisa Salkovitz Kohn, Member, Presidential Emergency Board No. 251

Elizabeth C. Wesman, Chair, Presidential Emergency Board No. 251

Elizabeth Wesman is a full-time labor arbitrator and a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators (NAA). She is listed on several labor arbitration panels, including the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the American Arbitration Association, the National Mediation Board, the Oregon Employment Relations Board, and the Washington Public Employment Relations Commission. Wesman is also an Emeritus Professor from the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, where she taught Labor Relations, Arbitration, and Human Resource Strategy courses for 20 years. Wesman is past President of the NAA Research and Education Fund and past President of the National Association of Railroad Referees. She holds a Ph.D. from the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. Her academic research and published works have been primarily in the areas of conflict resolution, employment discrimination, and arbitration of Title VII disputes. President Obama appointed her to serve on three Presidential Emergency Boards which studied commuter rail negotiations at New Jersey Transit and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority.

Barbara C. Deinhardt, Member, Presidential Emergency Board No. 251

Barbara Deinhardt is a labor and employment arbitrator and mediator. In 2022, President Biden appointed her to serve on Presidential Emergency Board 250 to resolve a dispute between railroads represented by the National Railway Labor Conference and the Coordinated Bargaining Coalition representing freight railroad unions. In 2014, President Obama appointed her to Presidential Emergency Boards 247 and 248. She has experience in federal and state government, serving as Chair of the New York State Employment Relations Board, as well as Chair of the New York State Workers' Compensation Board.

Lisa Salkovitz Kohn, Member, Presidential Emergency Board No. 251

Lisa Salkovitz Kohn has been a full-time labor and employment arbitrator and mediator for over 30 years. A member of the Board of Governors for the National Academy of Arbitrators (NAA), she is a past President of the NAA Research and Education Fund, and a past member of the boards of the Chicago Chapters of the Labor and Employment Research Association and the Association for Conflict Resolution and as a program co-chair for the National Association of Railroad Referees. She is listed on the arbitration panels of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the American Arbitration Association, the National Mediation Board, and has served on the panels of the Illinois Labor Relations Board, the Illinois State Board of Education, the Iowa Public Employment Relations Board, and many other labor-management arbitration panels in the public and private sectors. Kohn served for many years as a Hearing Officer and Conciliator for the Chicago Commission on Human Relations and the Cook County (Illinois) Commission on Human Rights. Prior to becoming an arbitrator and mediator, Kohn practiced as a labor attorney for several law firms and served as in-house labor attorney for a large telecommunications company. A native of the District of Columbia, Kohn is a graduate of Harvard University and holds a J.D. from the University of California Berkeley School of Law.