https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thenation.com/article/politics/nlrb-workers-rights-trump/tnamp/
Last week, while the country was riveted on the skyrocketing number of Covid-19 cases and trying to make sense of the incoherent response by the Trump administration, a little-known agency continued its steady dismantling of workers’ rights.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is a New Deal agency established by Congress to implement and enforce the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the law giving most private-sector workers the right to join together and take action—whether through forming a formal union or not—to improve their pay, benefits, and working conditions. These rights are more relevant now than ever, as demonstrated by the recent wave of strikes and job actions by health care workers and workers at Amazon, Instacart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and other companies. Workers have taken to the streets, started petition drives, and made bargaining demands in an effort to get their employers to provide safety equipment and institute other measures to protect them from workplace exposure to the Covid-19. Even before the Covid-19 crisis, worker interest in organizing unions was on the rise, with the percentage of nonunion workers saying they would vote for a union if given the chance up 50 percent from a similar poll 25 years ago.
The board is currently composed of three white male NLRB members and another white male general counsel (prosecutor)—all Republicans, three with careers representing corporations and one as a Republican Capitol Hill staffer. Both Democratic seats are currently vacant. There is nobody currently on the NLRB with experience representing workers or unions. Through these appointees, an agency that is supposed to protect workers’ right to organize has taken the law in exactly the opposite direction.
In decision after decision, the NLRB has stripped workers of their protections under the law, restricted their ability to organize at their workplace, slowed down the union election process to give employers more time to campaign against the union, repealed rules holding employers accountable for their actions, and undermined workers’ bargaining rights. (Disclosure: I co-authored a report detailing these rollbacks with my colleagues at the Economic Policy Institute. See “Unprecedented: The Trump NLRB’s Attack on Workers’ Rights.”) One measure of their impact: As of last October, the Chamber of Commerce was 10 for 10 in getting the board to act on the chamber’s recommended changes to weaken workers’ organizing and bargaining rights.