Posts tagged NLRB General Counsel
CDW Leads Letter Supporting Crystal Carey Nomination
April 16, 2025 // The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW) and the 20 undersigned organizations urge your support for the nomination of Crystal Carey to serve as the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Carey is well-qualified to serve and will be an asset to the Board in this role. We urge your support for her nomination.
Trump taps EEOC’s Lucas for new term, Morgan Lewis partner for NLRB general counsel
March 25, 2025 // Carey referred a request for comment to Morgan Lewis. The firm's chair, Jami McKeon, in a statement said that Carey's "background, experience, judgment, and training make her highly qualified for this important role, and we are excited for her on this well-deserved nomination.” Lucas, a former Gibson Dunn & Crutcher associate, was first appointed to the EEOC by Trump in 2020. She was a dissenting Republican voice on the Democrat-led board until Trump made her acting chair and named her chief of staff, Andrew Rogers, as acting general counsel.
Official Fired By Trump Returns To Work To Cheers After Judge Orders Reinstatement
March 11, 2025 // Wilcox filed a lawsuit seeking reinstatement, arguing her removal was unlawful. Judge Beryl A. Howell agreed with Wilcox, issuing an order last Thursday ensuring her temporary return to the agency as the underlying case moves forward. In a stinging opinion, Howell wrote that Trump failed to grasp the Constitution’s limits on executive power.
National Labor Relations Board Back to Quorum Strength as Member Wilcox Is Reinstated
March 11, 2025 // The statutory limitations swayed the judge, as did the Supreme Court’s 1935 decision in Humphrey’s Executor, where the Court upheld similar limits on the president’s ability to fire a Federal Trade Commission Official. In sum, Judge Howell ordered Wilcox’s reinstatement, giving the Board the quorum it lacked. This decision has implications for the President’s recent Executive Order seeking to vest all lawmaking power of Independent Administrative Agencies like the NLRB in the President’s office. Given the stakes here, the court’s decision is certainly not the final word, as President Trump’s team is expected to appeal, perhaps all the way to the Supreme Court, where they will argue that Humphrey’s Executor is distinguishable and that Board members do exercise executive authority and should therefore be in line with Presidential policies.
Ph.D. Workers and Their University Both Backed a Union Election. Then Trump Won.
March 6, 2025 // Student workers at other private universities across the nation may also be wary of going before the Trump-era NLRB. Since the November election, petitions to form graduate or undergraduate student unions have been withdrawn at Berea College, Clark University, Dartmouth College, Kenyon College, the New School and New York University, said William A. Herbert. Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College, said reports of what’s happened at Rochester suggest the university “has decided to shift to a pre-litigation mode that might include an effort at overturning current NLRB precedent.”
NLRB’s in-house tribunal undermines fairness and rule of law
February 25, 2025 // Nick felt he’d followed proper procedure and compiled thorough evidence to support his case. But none of it mattered. The NLRB doesn’t have to prosecute its allegations in a proper court of law. In fact, it doesn’t even have to go beyond its own walls. The agency’s general counsel filed the case in-house, applied the NLRB’s own rules (that toss aside standard rules of evidence), and held a hearing in front of an NLRB-employed administrative law judge (ALJ) at the NLRB’s offices. Any appeal of the ALJ’s decision goes to the NLRB itself. Unsurprisingly, the ALJ in Nick’s case ruled against the restaurant and ordered it to rehire the eight employees with backpay. The NLRB affirmed the ALJ’s decision, including her order to Hiran Management to compensate the employees for any “foreseeable” harm that purportedly resulted from the terminations. These so-called “compensatory damages” are not authorized under the National Labor Relations Act. But the NLRB “discovered” this authority in December 2022—90 years after the labor act was adopted.
No Love Lost: Acting National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Rescinds Litany of Former GC Abruzzo’s Policy Memoranda in Valentine’s Day Shakeup
February 19, 2025 // During her tenure, former GC Abruzzo frequently issued employee-friendly memos on a host of issues, including opposing captive audience meetings, clamping down on employer surveillance, and expressing her perception of the legality of non-compete agreements and pay-or-stay provisions (for example, see alerts here and here). The memos, issued by the NLRB’s top prosecutor, signal the agency’s policy and enforcement priorities, and impact agency staff’s interpretation of their role in carrying out the agency’s objectives. Under Abruzzo, Regional Directors evaluated and acted on unfair labor practice claims as directed by the memos instead of the binding law and NLRB precedent.
Trump fires EEOC and labor board officials, setting up legal fight
January 29, 2025 // Due to existing vacancies, Wilcox's ouster leaves the board with just two members, short of the quorum it needs to adjudicate even routine cases. (The board, when fully staffed, has five members.) With this move, Trump has effectively shut down the NLRB's operations, leaving the workers it defends on their own, AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said in a statement.
The value of union strikes under Trump
January 29, 2025 // Like the UAW strikes, media coverage celebrated the strikes, but the impact appears nonexistent. The Starbucks rolling strike lasted a handful of days and only affected 300 stores and 5,000 employees — a miniscule percentage of Starbucks’ 10,000-plus stores and almost 200,000 workers. The Amazon strike impacted less than 10 of Amazon’s more than 100 locations, and workers generally continued working.
The strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is now the longest in the nation. And it’s not over.
December 9, 2024 // Zack Tanner, the Newspaper Guild’s president, stood away from the crowd, wearing a Penguins jersey and smoking a cigar. His dog, a 103 lb. Akita named Bella, had been a little too excited by another, smaller dog in the crowd. “This has been elongated to this point solely because of the people inside,” he said. “In a labor battle, there’s strikers and there’s scabs. There’s two sides to a picket line.” As the strike has gone on, tensions between both sides have grown, and it’s unclear how or when the strike will end. On Nov. 13, the first negotiations between the Post-Gazette’s lawyers and the union in over a year ended after Tanner threw a chair at the wall of a conference room in the Omni William Penn Hotel.