Senators, Reject Dems’ Push To Pack NLRB With Union Hacks

Chuck Schumer recently announced that one of his “highest priorities” is to confirm Joe Biden’s nominees to the National Labor Relations Board before his party loses control of the Senate. He’s slated to make good on that promise on Wednesday, as a cloture vote on an NLRB renomination is scheduled to take place soon.

If Schumer secures another five-year term for NLRB Chair Lauren McFerran, Biden nominees will control the Labor Board until at least August 2026. Union elites are begging Schumer to “Trump-proof” the NLRB because they fear Trump’s appointees might focus on protecting individual workers’ rights instead of giving union officials more power. Big Labor has perpetuated the lie that politicians are only “pro-worker” if they comply with union demands.

Donald Trump erased that lie, winning reelection with unprecedented support from working-class Americans, including union members, while being relentlessly attacked by union officials. Even Teamsters union boss Sean O’Brien, who admitted that nearly 2 out of 3 Teamsters workers support Trump, refused to endorse him.

O’Brien has tried to spin himself as a Trump ally nonetheless, but all that betrays the truth. Like the other union bosses, the Teamsters hierarchy refused to support the former president because he didn’t promise them more power.

Specifically, Trump wouldn’t commit to vetoing a national right-to-work law. As Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman explained, “It is a red line for the Teamsters and must be for any union when a candidate for elected office does not oppose [right-to-work].”

Of course, right-to-work laws are the true pro-worker legislation, as they simply ensure that union dues are voluntary for all workers. Union bosses can rake in much more cash when they can take it directly out of workers’ paychecks without their permission, so they despise right-to-work.

Trump didn’t need to bow down to forced-dues demands from O’Brien or any other union boss because he didn’t need their help. He proved that winning politicians can simply be pro-worker without being mouthpieces for Big Labor or Big Business.

President Trump can send a powerful pro-worker message by nominating someone to the NLRB who doesn’t represent unions or corporations before the board, only workers. The NLRB is supposed to adjudicate disputes among companies, union officials, and workers, but workers are often lumped into one of the first two categories.

When union lawyers prevail in an NLRB case, they want to claim “workers won.” But when actual rank-and-file workers file charges against union officials or try to remove a union altogether, activist NLRB board members refuse to acknowledge them as individuals, instead treating them as mindless drones who’ve been tricked into doing their employer’s bidding.

Union partisans on the NLRB refuse to accept that workers often have good reasons to oppose a union, which leads to perverse anti-worker rulings in cases where workers themselves bring charges against a union.

Last year, the Biden board issued a radical decision that empowers union officials to impose themselves on workers without allowing those workers to vote in a secret ballot election. The same Biden-appointed board majority then changed the NLRB’s rules to block workers from obtaining a secret ballot vote after they are unionized without an election.

Some corporations defend their employees, but too often they are complicit — whether willingly or as a result of union pressure tactics — in union officials’ schemes to impose themselves on workers, leaving workers to fend for themselves before the NLRB.

In June, Meijer employee Joseph Arnold filed NLRB charges after the grocery chain illegally threatened to fire him for refusing to become a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Roger Cornett filed similar charges in March against grocery chain Kroger after a manager demanded he join the union and authorize contributions to the UFCW Political Action Committee, which backed more than 200 federal candidates in the 2024 cycle without supporting a single Republican.

Although the Biden NLRB aggressively prosecutes employers at the behest of union lawyers, these worker-initiated cases against corporations in bed with union officials have been left to languish. In both cases, NLRB officials haven’t even taken employees’ statements.

Under Biden, the NLRB majority has been pro-forced unionism, not pro-worker, so they simply aren’t interested in cases where employers are assisting union officials with extracting dues from workers.

Workers need someone on the NLRB who is devoted to protecting their freedoms and interests, but the vast majority of labor lawyers work for either companies or union officials. Only a select few have dedicated their careers to providing free services to rank-and-file workers.

Senators should reject Schumer’s last-minute attempt to pack the NLRB and allow Trump to nominate truly pro-worker advocates to the open NLRB positions.

Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Foundation and National Right to Work Committee.