President-elect Donald Trump will get the chance to fill two vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board with Republicans when he takes office, giving his party an earlier opportunity to reshape the board.
The Democrat-controlled board developed a labor-friendly reputation during Joe Biden’s presidency. Petitions for union representation more than doubled over the course of his time in office, according to an NLRB report. Democrats and advocates are watching closely to see whether Trump will fill the vacancies with anti-union replacements, worrying that his picks could set the labor movement back for years.
Sen. Bernie Sanders told NOTUS he has “many” concerns about how the NLRB will fare under Trump.
“I think it’s going to be a very anti-labor board, replacing a board that has been probably the most sympathetic to workers in modern history,” Sanders, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said.
The five-member board is an independent agency tasked in part with protecting workers’ rights to organize and bargain. After board Chair Lauren McFerran’s term expired Monday, the board is down to two Democrats and one Republican.
Biden had an opportunity to confirm a Democratic majority on the board until 2026. But Democrats, who will also soon lose control of the Senate, failed to reappoint McFerran last week and withdrew a motion to vote on Biden’s other nominee to the board, Joshua Ditelberg, a Republican labor attorney. Republicans and outgoing independent Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — both of whom are former Democrats — teamed up to block McFerran in a procedural vote.
By not filling the vacancies, Democrats are set to give control of the board to Republicans years before they needed to.
Now, Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she’s concerned Trump will put up nominees who “represent managers” rather than workers, which will “tilt the outcomes” in cases the NLRB hears.
“There’s Department of Commerce for business interests. The Department of Labor and the NLRB are supposed to be there to protect workers, but the Republicans want to be able to capture both,” Warren told NOTUS.
The Biden White House and the Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment. But Democrats were already kicking themselves over the lost opportunity.
Sen. Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, told NOTUS he “certainly” has concerns about the future of the NLRB under Trump.
“Protecting the interests of working families in a global economy is hugely important, and I’m very concerned that [the Trump administration] is going to turn back the clock,” Wyden said.
Off the Hill, labor groups were keeping a close eye on the situation — and they are desperate to get those positions filled.
“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,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement.
United Steelworkers told its members to be prepared for the reversal of recent decisions by the board, the weakening of bargaining ability and the sidelining of workers’ protections.
“Our nation faces the possibility of an extremely anti-worker and inactive NLRB,” the union said on its website.
And Laborers’ International Union of North America’s general president, Brent Booker, said in a statement to NOTUS that the NLRB plays a crucial role in protecting workers’ rights to unionize. “Regardless of who is seated on the Board, we’re watching to see if it stands with protecting working-class rights or trampling on them at the behest of billionaires,” Booker said.
One senator, John Fetterman, had a rosier outlook than his Democratic colleagues and pointed to Trump’s pick for labor secretary — Oregon’s U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who is known as a union supporter — as evidence that the NLRB wouldn’t necessarily become more politicized.
“I thought that [Trump] nominated a really strong nominee for secretary of labor, so I’m encouraged by that. I think it’s clear that the Republicans realize that they don’t want to dump on working union families,” Fetterman told NOTUS.
Many Republicans are hoping to shore up support among union workers, especially with the inroads their party made among rank-and-file membership and the overtures from high-profile candidates in the 2024 election, including Trump. But ideal nominees to the board, they say, won’t only have unions at the forefront of their priorities.
Missouri Rep. Eric Burlison told NOTUS he would like to see Trump nominate someone who is “pro-business” to the board.
“I would like for that board to be more business-centric and be focused on worker rights, as opposed to just unions,” Burlison said. “[Biden’s] administration has been heavy into changing regulations that bolster unions, and while I believe people should have a right to join a union, I still think people shouldn’t be forced to join a union, and I don’t think the federal government should be tipping the scale to try to build in that direction.”
On the other side of the Capitol, not all Senate Republicans had thought about what Trump should do with the NLRB yet, but several were optimistic about walking the line between businesses’ and unions’ interests.
“We can strike that balance,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin told NOTUS. “The unions want their union brothers and sisters employed. We just have to make sure that the company’s not the enemy, and the labor is not the enemy either.”
“It’s no longer the Republican Party against unions,” Mullin later told reporters. “It’s about us figuring out how we can work together and marry those two.”
Senate Republicans, like Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis, are also making the case that their party’s relationship with labor unions has transformed between Trump’s first administration and his second.
“The Republican Party has become very much the blue-collar party that includes both union and nonunion workers, and so I think that there are people in organized labor who realize that,” Lummis told NOTUS. “Union bosses need to be more attuned to working with Trump, and Trump has shown a tremendous willingness to reach out to them.”
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Em Luetkemeyer is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.