The agency that exists to protect your right to organize just got handed to the people who spent their careers making sure you can’t. Senate confirmed two Trump picks to the National Labor Relations Board on August 7th, locking in a 3-1 Republican majority. One of them is a former chief labor counsel for Boeing — yes, the Boeing currently under investigation for retaliating against workers who reported safety defects. Trump already fired the general counsel who was actually enforcing the law. A federal judge ruled he illegally fired the board chair. The administration shrugged and kept going. The NLRB is now run by management-side lawyers whose entire professional lives were spent telling workers to sit down.
First thing on the chopping block: the Cemex decision, a Biden-era rule that said if a company cheats during a union election, it has to recognize the union anyway. Gone. Next: the ban on captive audience meetings. That’s where your boss locks you in a conference room on company time and explains why unions will ruin your life. For seventy-five years that was legal. Biden’s board banned it in 2024. This board is bringing it back. They’re also going after rules that stopped Amazon from forcing workers to sit through anti-union propaganda. Every worker protection from the last four years is being torn up by the agency that wrote them.
The right to unionize still technically exists. It just has to survive a board that thinks your boss should be allowed to trap you in a room and explain why you don’t need one. They didn’t change the rules of the game. They gave the referee a company jersey.