Trump’s Anti-Union Offensive and How We Stop It

Donald Trump is trying to shock and awe the workers’ movement (and everyone else) into submission. On the labor rights front, this took the form of a late Monday night firing of pro-union National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) officials, including General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo and board member Gwynne Wilcox. The latter move is illegal, since Wilcox’s congressionally mandated term does not end until August 2028. And it leaves the five-person national board without a quorum and therefore unable to do its work nationally. (Local NLRB work, however, can still continue in the meantime, which means that workers should not yet throw in the towel on filing for board-sanctioned union elections — more on this below).

It’s unclear what Trump’s next steps will be. Perhaps he intends to leave a seat vacant in order to hobble the board for the next four years. But for employers, such an approach would have the downside of leaving all of the Biden board’s pro-union decisions on the books.

Maybe the new administration just wants to temporarily deprive labor of a board majority until congressional Republicans confirm pro-business nominees. Some have speculated that firing Wilcox is an attempt to fast track Musk and Bezos’s push to get the Supreme Court to rule that the NLRB is unconstitutional.

All we know for sure is that, contrary to some union leaders and pundits’ ill-founded hopes, Trump is not taking a more pro-union approach than prior Republican administrations. To the contrary, his moves so far suggest a desire to flout legal bounds on behalf of his billionaire buddies.

That said, falling into alarmism by overstating the extent to which union rights have suddenly disappeared will only play into the hands of Trump and corporate America. Not only do workers still have the legal right to unionize, but they can also still use the NLRB for its most helpful functions: running union elections and filing Unfair Labor Practices (ULPs) when employers break the law. These tasks are entirely the responsibility of the board’s regional offices and therefore do not depend on quorum nationally.

Without a quorum at the national five-person board, companies will have an easier time refusing to bargain first contracts, since employers could refuse to bargain and appeal ULPs to a paralyzed national body. But the NLRB already had extremely weak contract enforcement powers, even under a pro-union fighter like Jennifer Abruzzo. Well-funded employers