President-elect Trump’s incoming administration has workers and labor advocates worried about attacks on labor rights. Frustrations have recently turned towards the Democratic Party, who, according to California Representative Ro Khanna, botched their chance to secure a majority on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for the first two years of Trump’s term.
The NLRB is tasked with enforcing labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. The board is governed by a five-person board and a general council, all of whom are appointed by the president of the United States. Therefore, historically, the sitting president’s sympathy or disdain for organized labor and workers’ rights has had enormous influence on the decisions of the NLRB, with major consequences for workers across the country.
Given this context, Ro Khanna has accused Democratic Party leaders of a massive procedural blunder which has “massive implications for the American people.” According to Khanna, Democrats fumbled the reconfirmation of NLRB Chair, Lauren McFerran, a Democrat who was appointed by Biden and is sympathetic to workers in comparison with some of her more pro-corporate predecessors. McFerran was eligible for reconfirmation, and her reconfirmation would have secured a 3-2 Democratic majority on the NLRB for Trump’s first two years in office.
“On the morning of [December 11], Senate Democrats had a chance to move McFarren’s nomination vote through—which would’ve led to a secondary vote to confirm,” Khanna tweeted. “Senator Vance, Roberts, and Manchin were absent that morning. But we delayed the vote (for what I’m hearing described as “no reason”) until Vance and Manchin returned, deadlocking the vote at 49-49. We then failed to get word to Vice President Harris quickly enough to come and deliver the tie-breaking vote. In the 90 minutes that transpired, Senator Manchin returned first, swinging the vote in the other direction and ceding the NLRB to MAGA control two years earlier than necessary.”
According to Khanna, more pro-corporate Senators Vance, Roberts, and Manchin are not entirely to blame for the failure to reconfirm McFerran. Also to blame are Democratic Party leaders who appeared to have delayed the vote for “no reason.”
Organized labor has denounced the Senate’s blocking of McFerran’s reconfirmation. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler released a statement saying that, “Today, 50 senators didn’t just vote against Lauren McFerran’s reconfirmation—they voted against the working people of this country.”
“Make no mistake: This vote had nothing to do with stopping Chair McFerran’s renomination and everything to do with reversing generations of progress workers have made toward building a fairer and more just economy,” Shuler stated. “The NLRB faces relentless intimidation and threats from the very corporations and wealthy bosses the agency is tasked with holding accountable—none more notable than Elon Musk, who’s teamed up with other billionaires to try to dissolve the board rather than respect workers’ rights on the job. As Musk prepares for a role at the top of the incoming Trump administration, the NLRB urgently needed McFerran reconfirmed to ensure that working people can rely on the board when massive companies violate our basic rights.”
Organized labor is on the alert for the planned attacks by Trump’s administration, especially given Project 2025’s planned attacks on workers’ right to organize (which Trump has publicly disavowed but continues to adhere to to some extent). Some expect Trump’s NLRB nominees to reverse several Biden-era board decisions. This includes the Stericycle decision, which enables unions to challenge company rules that intimidate workers away from engaging in labor organizing, Cemex, which makes it more difficult for bosses to refuse to recognize a union with majority support, and Amazon, which ruled that the mandatory anti-union meetings that companies like Amazon have forced workers to attend are unlawful.
Trump’s incoming administration remains loyal to the ultra-rich and corporate interests. Trump has broken a record for donations for his inauguration, raising more than USD 170 million. Trump has raised so much money for his inauguration from the ultra-rich that some events have run out of room for V.I.P. tickets. Among these donors include Fortune 500 companies and individual billionaires such as Amazon, Ford, and hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin. As Amazon workers were hitting the picket lines right before the holiday season, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was being wined and dined by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
But organized labor remains undeterred and ready to fight back against what Trump and his billionaire donors have in store. The two-million-member-strong Service Employees International Union just re-joined the AFL-CIO after a 20-year split. This brings AFL-CIO total membership up to 15 million.
“We are ready to stand up to union-busters at corporations and in government and rewrite the outdated, sexist, racist labor laws that hold us all back,” said SEIU President April Verrett. “We’re so proud to join together as nearly 15 million members to redouble our commitment to building a thriving, healthy future for working people.”
“CEOs and billionaires want nothing more than to see workers divided, but we’re standing here today with greater solidarity than ever to reach the 60 million Americans who say they’d join a union tomorrow if the laws allowed and to unrig our labor laws to guarantee every worker in America the basic right to organize on the job,” said AFL-CIO President Shuler.
The AFL-CIO is also working to prepare its affiliates to fight Trump’s mass deportation plans and planned attacks on immigrant workers, and also planning to defend federal employees against Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Organized workers kept up the fight against their bosses throughout 2024, including at mega-corporations such as Boeing, resulting in gains for all including an overall 6% rise in wages for all unionized workers in the private sector, as the threat of strikes loomed large over employers who rushed to appease the demands of organized workers.
