White said he saw the opposite impact on management. “When you’re up against an agency that is openly pro-union, it makes it harder for employers to make and act on decisions that are legal but don’t want to be seen as illegal,” he said.
Kayla Blado, director of the NLRB’s Office of Congressional and Public Affairs, defended the agency’s record under Biden.
“The National Labor Relations Act is a law that protects workers’ rights,” she said in a statement, referring to the 1935 measure creating the agency. Abruzzo “supported his team in robustly enforcing these protections, educating workers about their rights and employers and unions about their obligations, as well as asking the Board and courts to enforce the National Labor Relations Act as Congress intended,” she said.
Pendulum swings
“They have constantly pushed the envelope on where their authority lies,” Ed Egee, who held Blado’s role at the agency under Trump, said of the current NLRB. “That’s why they’re going to have trouble in federal courts on some of these issues.”
Last year, the council launched a rule which revived an Obama-era measure that made it easier to go after companies for labor violations committed by franchisees and contractors. A federal court knocked down this year, and the NLRB withdrew the appeal in July. In June, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Starbucks in a case that strengthened standards for issuing court orders that protect workers from retaliation while organizing.
The resurgent U.S. labor movement has also suffered high-profile defeats — especially in the South, where organizers face greater obstacles and union support is weaker. Nationwide, public support for unions is at record levels and the number of workers who organized for the first time last year reached highest annual level since 2000. Yet, union membership fees continued to fall as many non-union workers entered the workforce.
Celine McNicholas, like Blado and Egee, ran the NLRB’s Office of Congressional and Public Affairs, serving under the Obama administration. The Biden-era agency “undoed the damage done to the Trump board in certain cases,” she said, but not as aggressively as previously thought.
There will be many more strikes, many more labor actions, or the labor movement will die.
Kate Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University
“They haven’t, in terms of precedent-setting issues, unchecked the boxes” at every level — such as Trump-era rules that allowed employers to restrict workers’ use of company email to organize and discipline employees in a new union before contract negotiations,” said McNicholas, who is now policy director and general counsel at EPI Action, part of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute think tank.
In LeRoy’s opinion, “the Biden NLRB is a direct response to the Trump NLRB.”
In 2019, it overturned 70 years of precedent to give employers more leeway to make mid-contract changes to non-fixed rules and policies. As the Trump White House has done with many agencies, it has proposed cutting the NLRB budget – which has remained stable for nearly a decade through fiscal 2023, lagging behind inflation – but Congress has refused to do so.
Trump also oversaw a drop in union election petitions. “When you know you have a board that is particularly hostile to workers, the logical and sensible move for organizers is to think, ‘Well, I don’t want this issue to come to this board,’” McNicholas said.
What’s next
Labor records from the last two administrations are being examined in the 2024 race.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention last month. Before becoming Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance, Republican of Ohio, visited striking UAW workers last fall, weeks after Biden did the same.
Meanwhile, Harris won strong union support after taking the lead on the Democratic ticket. And both campaigns compete for black voters, who are more likely to be union members than any other racial or ethnic group.
Although some analysts expect a Harris administration be more business-friendly than Biden’s, others predict continuity. “She will get the job done,” SEIU President April Verrett said on a recent press conference call.
No matter who wins the election, challenges to the NLRB remain. Recent Supreme Court decisions, including the overturning of a 40-year-old precedent in a ruling that reduced the power of federal agencies, could weaken the NLRB.
Egee, who is now vice president of government relations and workforce development at the National Retail Federation, a trade group that filed suit short friend in this case, he said that the result could bring consistency. “The ever-changing NLRB is not good for business stability,” he said.
The agency also faces challenges to its constitutionality and oversight powers for companies like SpaceX, Trader Joe’s, and Amazon, efforts that coincide with a broader conservative push to constrain the administrative state.
Blado noted that the National Labor Relations Act was deemed constitutional in 1937 and has faced corporate resistance for decades.
“While current challenges require the NLRB to spend scarce resources defending against them,” she said, “we have seen that the results of these types of challenges are ultimately a delay in justice, but that ultimately justice prevails.”
The fate of the NLRB could be pivotal to the labor movement, Bronfenbrenner said. If its influence weakens, “there will be a lot more strikes, a lot more labor actions, or the labor movement will die,” she predicted. “Either he will become more militant or simply give up.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
