In his first seven months in office, President Trump has made quick work undoing a host of Obama-era labor regulations. Now that he finally got around to making two nominations to the National Labor Relations Board, he’s beginning the pernicious, though slow-moving, assault on worker and union rights that typically plays out when the board has a Republican majority.
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Both Emanuel and Kaplan have drawn the wrath of labor unions and progressive advocacy organizations, which contend that they will come down in favor of corporations instead of the working people that Trump purported to speak for during his presidential campaign. “In today’s economy, where inequality is on the rise and unions are on the decline, workers need to be able to feel comfortable when they come together to better working conditions,” says Catherine Ruckelshaus, general counsel for the National Employment Law Project. “The board is supposed to support those actions.”
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The impending Trump NLRB highlights just how precarious the board is as a vehicle for transforming labor law in favor of workers. While piecemeal advances under Democratic administrations’ labor boards are helpful, they are, of course, nowhere near enough to combat the systemic undermining of federal labor law and collective worker power by corporations and allies in the Republican Party—especially when GOP administrations make the NLRB’s pendulum swing back in favor of management.
Read the full article in the American Prospect.
