Last week, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, perpetual Democratic Party adversaries, came together as instrumental in blocking Lauren McFerran’s reconfirmation to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The political party in power typically gets three NLRB seats. With McFerran blocked, President-elect Donald Trump will be eligible to nominate two new people to the NLRB and determine the board’s political persuasion.
Since members have fixed terms, President Joe Biden tried to reappoint McFerran to preserve the board’s Democratic three-seat majority during the initial two years of the Trump administration. McFerran has been a member of the NLRB since 2014. In January 2021, Biden named her as the board’s chairperson. If McFerran had been reappointed, the Democratic Party could have protected the board’s 3-2 liberal/pro-worker majority until 2026. Now, because McFerran was not reconfirmed, the next U.S. president can appoint an agency chair who, because the new Trump administration is already shaped by wealthy donors such as Elon Musk ( CEO of SpaceX and Tesla), Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal), and David Sacks (a former PayPal executive who co-founded the investment firm Craft Ventures), will most likely be less apt to make rulings that assist workers. Business leaders will have considerable influence over the federal government going forward.
“Thinking about where organized labor and where Black workers are at in 2024,” said Austin McCoy, West Virginia University history professor. “Having people like Elon Musk, who is basically going to be operating within the Trump administration, who we know runs Tesla and SpaceX, or even these billionaires who are sort of trying to curry favor with the Trump administration –– seeing this sort of close connection between billionaires and this incoming administration, they might be more empowered to do whatever they can to support unionization, but then also continue to turn the screws on workers in terms of working conditions: making it difficult to file grievances, making it difficult to improve work conditions. The fact that workers may not be able to earn as much money in terms of a lack of raises and things of that nature may not necessarily stop workers from trying to unionize, but it’s going to make it easier for private-sector companies to try to obstruct the process.”
NLRB helped pacify the labor movement
The NLRB, established in 1935 under the National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act), is tasked with overseeing the dynamics between U.S. businesses and employees. When workers try to unionize or have their employers deal with health and safety concerns, for example, they can appeal for support or report their issues to the NLRB.
Before the establishment of the NLRB, strikes and sabotage were widespread in the U.S., and employers frequently compelled workers to refrain from union participation. “Employers often required that workers agree not to join a union or be involved in union activities during the term of their employment, and the federal courts held such agreements binding,” wrote the late University of Pennsylvania Professor Michael L. Wachter in a 2012 research paper.
“Concerted activity by employees was not protected. If workers went out on strike and did not return to work when served with a state court-ordered injunction, the striking workers were in contempt of court. When confronted by police or Pinkerton guards, strikes would often turn violent. The next move in many strikes was for the state governor to call out the National Guard to restore order.”
The establishment of the NLRB helped pacify the more revolutionary tendencies in the labor movement. James Boggs, the Marxist labor activist, is recorded as writing in his “Pages from a Black Radical’s Notebook” that “From 1935 to the entry of the United States to the war in 1941, we saw in this country the greatest period of industrial strife and workers’ struggle for control of production that the United States has ever known. We saw more people than ever before become involved and interested in the labor movement as a social movement. Those who worked in the plants under a new Magna Carta of labor, the great Wagner Act, not only had a new outlook where their own lives were concerned. They also had the power to intimidate management, from the foremen up to the top echelons, forcing them to yield to workers’ demands whenever production standards were in dispute. When management did not yield, the workers pulled the switches and shut down production until it did yield.”
The establishment of the NLRB has led to less labor unrest. Under the Biden-Harris administration, attempts were made to pass the PRO Act (Protecting the Right to Organize Act),
which would have further strengthened labor protections.
Helping protect worker rights
While McFerran served as NLRB chair, the agency made important rulings, most notably its recent decision finding that captive-audience meetings –– when employees are forced to attend meetings with their boss while union election campaigns are going on –– are illegal. That new NLRB ruling is based on the union organizing that took place at the Amazon JFK8 Fulfillment Center on Staten Island. In 2021, workers there began organizing to create the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), the first-ever labor union at Amazon.
“When Biden took office, he also removed Trump’s general counsel and installed Jennifer Abruzzo,” said McCoy. “It sounds like this is what’s going to happen again, where Trump is going to come in, and he’s going to remove the general counsel –– which is like the team of lawyers, and this is the head lawyer. He’s probably going to install someone that is more in line with his politics and policies. And I think this NLRB is going to seek to reverse some of the things that the Biden administration’s NLRB has done.”
According to Service Employees International Union (SEIU) International President April Verrett when the vote against McFerran was announced, “Failing to move forward with Chair McFerran’s reconfirmation to the NLRB is truly a missed opportunity to ensure the NLRB remains an impartial agency that working people in every occupation can count on to help protect their rights. Now more than ever, it’s critical that the National Labor Relations Act is properly enforced. SEIU members and working people across this country are deeply disappointed that the Senate failed to reconfirm Chair McFerran, but we are not defeated. We are determined to keep fighting to build an economy that works for all people.”