Posts tagged quorum
Op-ed: Organized Labor Pushes Blue States to Protect Private University Student Workers
September 2, 2025 // Without a quorum at the NLRB, state legislation that codifies collective bargaining for private-sector employees may be key to preserving workers’ rights.
Unions ‘Wait and See’ on Elections as Trump Upends Labor Arena
August 20, 2025 // That political uncertainty, coupled with a volatile economy and labor market, could have workers second-guessing whether they’re ready to stick their necks out for collective action, the data show. College athlete employment, protections for political protests, and higher penalties for labor law violations are just some of the issues that worker advocates may want to steer away from a Republican board. The average number of newly certified unions per month dropped 22.3% between January and July this year, compared to the last six months of the Biden administration, according to data from the NLRB’s monthly election reports.
President Trump Taps Two GOP Nominees for NLRB, But Uncertainty Remains
July 21, 2025 // President Trump nominated Scott Mayer (chief labor counsel at Boeing Co.) and James Murphy (former NLRB attorney) to fill two vacant Republican seats on the NLRB, potentially restoring the Board’s ability to issue decisions. Mayer’s work experience demonstrates a strong management background, having worked at InterContinental Hotels Group, MGM Resorts International, Aramark, and several law firms prior to his current role at Boeing. Meanwhile, Murphy was selected by Kaplan to serve as his chief counsel in 2017 and has spent his career at the Board, having served as staff counsel or supervisor on the staffs of dozens of Board members.
Trump Names NLRB Nominees, Providing Path to Functioning Quorum
July 17, 2025 // The administration Thursday nominated Scott Mayer, chief labor counsel at the Boeing Co., and James Murphy, a former career NLRB lawyer, to fill the two open Republican board seats. The NLRB has been unable to issue decisions for most of Trump’s second term because his January firing of Democratic member Gwynne Wilcox dropped the board below the three-member minimum necessary for a quorum. The US Supreme Court blocked a federal judge’s order to reinstate Wilcox as litigation over her termination proceeds. If Trump’s nominees sail through the Senate approval process, they would join Chair Marvin Kaplan to form a three-member GOP majority on the board, with David Prouty continuing to serve as the sole Democratic member.
Democracy in the Workplace Is Under Threat
June 30, 2025 // The National Labor Relations Board, which the NLRA created, initially agreed with the majority-of-a-unit standard. In a 1936 decision involving Chrysler, the board rejected a unionization election in which only 125 out of an eligible 700 workers had voted. While 97 percent of the voting workers supported organizing, the board rightly concluded that a mere 17 percent of workers didn’t represent the views of the majority. The law’s text required that ruling. But the NLRB reversed course within months, giving a minority of workers the power to determine the majority’s future in a case involving newspaper workers. In a separate decision, the board declared that it couldn’t require a majority of workers to vote in favor of unionization, nor could it require the lower bar of a quorum. The NLRB, in the 1930s, defended its rejection of the law’s plain text by saying that, with a majority requirement, “the purpose of the [NLRA] would be thwarted.” But the board itself is doing the thwarting of workers’ rights and workplace democracy.
House Committee Debates NLRB’s Fairness and Transparency
June 18, 2025 // Also at issue was how workers vote for or against unionization. When workers select a union, said Vincent Vernuccio, president of the Institute for the American Worker, they should be allowed to make that choice “securely and privately” and “without intimidation or coercion.” He cited the “true language” of the NLRA that says a “union must be chosen by the majority of all the employees in a unit.” Vernuccio advocated for the use of secret-ballot elections in place of card check, an organizing method in which a union gathers worker signatures.
Misread: How Legal Authorities Allowed Tyranny of the Minority to Subvert Worker Enfranchisement
June 10, 2025 // It is time to bring worker enfranchisement to unions across the country. In a new report co-published by Institute for the American Worker and Mackinac Center, author Steve Delie outlines how union organizing should be held to a higher threshold, requiring unions to win a majority of all employees at a job site or, at a minimum, require a quorum of those workers to vote in order to organize them. Delie shows the current majority of votes approach is contrary to the plain language of the National Labor Relations Act, the federal law that governs private sector unions. The NLRA clearly requires a “majority of the employees in a unit” to certify a union.
‘We’re losing doctors every day’: As Mass General Brigham primary care doctors vote on union, effort is slowed by Trump
June 2, 2025 // The health system says the NLRB regional director in Boston erred by allowing 237 primary care doctors at 29 practices to vote on whether to form their own union. In fact, MGB says, as many as three-quarters of those physicians were ineligible to vote under NLRB rules because they work in practices that are integrated into acute-care hospitals with other kinds of doctors. Under the rules, MGB contends, the proposed union would have to include all physicians at those hospitals, an argument the regional director previously rejected.
Whole Foods Union Certified by US in First for Amazon’s Grocer
June 1, 2025 // Employees at the Philadelphia site voted 130 to 100 in January to unionize with the United Food & Commercial Workers union. Whole Foods argued the result should be overturned, alleging the union made promises and provided free car rides to workers that prevented a fair election, and that a ruling by the labor board’s Democratic members deprived the company of its rights. The union has denied wrongdoing.
U Rochester Ph.D. Student Workers Strike for an Election Without the NLRB
April 27, 2025 // University of Rochester Ph.D. student workers began striking this week to pressure the institution to agree to what they call a “fair union election.” And for the process to be fair, they say, it can’t be handled by the Trump-era National Labor Relations Board. “We don’t see any kind of path through the NLRB at present,” said George Elkind, a Ph.D. student on the proposed UR Graduate Labor Union’s organizing committee.