Democrats Are Letting a Vital Chance to Protect Workers Slip Away

For all the hype currently surrounding the Democrats over their fading appeal to working-class voters, the inevitable test of the party’s ability to deliver a meaningful victory for American workers: the vote to confirm National Labor Relations Board Chair Lauren McFarren. In August, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by Bernie Sanders, voted to confirm McFarren for a full vote, but her nomination has since stalled. Now that Republicans are poised to take control of the Senate in January, there’s no time to waste trying to get McFarren to go overseas.

NLRB played an important role in protection and extension of workers’ rights during the Biden administration. He issued regulations punishing employers for retaliating against workplace organizing, reversed a number of Trump administration anti-labor directives and enshrined basic collective bargaining rights for on-site workers as well as independent contractors. Most of this record is done through aggressive work NLRB Lead Counsel Jennifer Abruzzobut McFarren also played an important role in reviving the agency’s original mission as the chief defender of collective bargaining rights in the workplace.

That McFarren’s confirmation dragged on until the end of the 118th Congress is already an indictment of the Democrats’ casual attention to basic workers’ rights, but the neglect is part of an unfortunate larger pattern. And only after the agency’s long lobbying efforts received a nominal increase in the budget in the overall appropriations bill for 2023, well shy of the 10 percent increase he requested and far short of what NLRB officials need to keep up with the growing workload and understaffing. And even that modest spending was the agency’s first budget increase since 2014. Meanwhile, Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Sanders’ House colleague, delivered cynical hearings focus the support of workers’ rights on the part of NLRB as a tool of the party’s democratic efforts in the elections; The group’s efforts came to nothing legislatively, but tied up more of the agency’s scarce resources in an attempt to protect its autonomy and legitimacy.

The NLRB’s track record under Biden has also spawned a militant pushback from the private sector. Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, SpaceX and Amazon are all companies that seek to eliminate or prevent organizing discussions among their employees – sued challenging the agency’s constitutionality. Right-wing legal advocacy groups such as the Federalist Society also took off revolves around the agency Cemex rulingwhich held that employers found to have engaged in unfair labor practices before a union election were required to recognize and negotiate with the union.

Since the Senate has been slow to confirm McFarren, there is little chance that he will be left on the hook, especially since other key positions, such as Biden’s 41 nominees to the federal judiciary, are also waiting to be filled. It’s a potential miscalculation that could seriously undermine the cause of workers’ rights — not to mention the Democratic Party’s tarnished electoral brand. “While there are many important pending nominations that require the Senate’s attention, none is more substantively or symbolically important than McFerran’s nomination,” said Jeff Hauser, head of federal watchdog group Revolving Door. Project. “Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his party will be disgraced if they prefer a relaxed Thanksgiving turkey dinner or an extended Christmas at some fancy resort to the NLRB. I personally think that (Foremen Union President) Sean O’Brien was wrong about the two political parties, but it would be a huge mistake for Schumer to try to make his analysis look like it was accurate.”

The danger to the labor movement if the Democrats don’t get their act together is clear. The second Trump administration will be much more disciplined in dismantling workers’ rights than the first. Elon Musk, the anti-union CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, has announced himself de facto elected co-president after lavishly funding Trump’s 2024 campaign. If Trump follows through on his campaign promise to anoint Musk his “Efficiency Czar” to target supposedly nonessential government spending, expect the NLRB to lose base funding again. And needless to say, the multifaceted legal challenge to dismantle the agency and its operational powers is likely to meet favorably with the right-wing Supreme Court, which has already a brutal litany of anti-labor regulations. Keeping McFarren in office until October 2026 would at least allow the beleaguered NLRB to continue to function as a critical bridgehead for protecting workers’ rights, especially as Trump reshuffles virtually every other branch of the administrative state against them.

Rallying to strengthen the NLRB will also send an urgent signal to the American public that Democrats have learned from the disastrous results of the 2024 election that they are the party of Americans instead of dismissing and belittling the struggles of Americans fighting for their livelihoods. The new course is ready to fight for them long and hard. The alternative scenario would be the worst possible reflection on the election results. Says Hauser, “That Schumer’s investment in extended recesses has led us to the point where the leadership, and therefore the mission of the NLRB, is so threatened is beyond the pale.”