Now that billionaires have captured a 3-1 majority of the NLRB, some right leaning labor / corporate defense law firms are clucking and gloating about the coming bloodbath in the laws protecting US workers’ rights to organize union votes. [You may read lots more of that political invective here.]

It is a false-framing though, to cast these as Biden labor policies. These laws strech back to the early 1990s. And they were mostly given renewed teeth, in the two Obama administrations. In any event, they’ve been settled law for over 12 years. And now, Bezos and Musk will wipe them off the books. Here’s that:

…What Happened?

The NLRB has historically refrained from overturning precedent unless it has three votes to do so. Now that James Macy has been approved by the Senate, the Board has three Republican appointees (Macy, Chairman James Murphy, and Scott Mayer) and just one Democratic appointee (David Prouty). That means we can expect the Board to begin taking action to strip away many of the legal standards set [over the last 14 years]….

Speech and Expression During Union Campaigns / Captive Audience Meetings (Amazon.com Services)

There is no issue that our Labor team feels more strongly about. All of them provide a 100% prediction that that new Board will [permit] employers to require mandatory attendance at employer meetings regarding unionization.

This will overturn the… 2024 decision that… held that mandatory captive audience meetings violate the NLRA….

An employer forcing its employees to sit through anti-union lectures (on pain of being docked pay, or even losing their jobs, no less)… plainly violates what MAGA claims are rights to not listen, under the free association [or refusal to associate] jurisprudence, that they would say is embedded in our First Amendment rights.

These guys cannot keep the players straight — when employers want to lecture employees about participating in preventative health programs at work, these MAGA people cry that that violates their “freedom” to make poor healthcare choces in their lives. But just as unions cause increasing wages, and thus increasing costs, at companies — failure to join the fitness programs at companies clearly cost employers money, too. But no billionaires (save perhaps Bill Gates, Tim Cook and Phil Knight) are taking that to court.

In any event, the right leaning law firm is right: this Trumpain NLRB clearly now intends to strip workers’ rights, and benefit billionaires, like Bezos. Damn.

नमस्ते