I’m a very “incremental changes don’t fix a broken system” type of person, but Biden’s NLRB deserves credit. It’s obviously operating within existing labor laws, but it’s a been doing everything within that legal power to help unions and it’s a significant reason for the success of so many unionization pushes in the last several years
I should actually do some research on why this is, huh. one sec
Biden, to his credit, went and fired the Top Lawyer of the Board immediately (the first time a President has exercised this authority since 1950 lol). I don’t think he himself has done anything that different since then - his appointees came from SEIU, which is pretty normal afaik, and he waited for a normal term to expire before getting his 3/5 majority on the Board itself.
That alone has been pretty big - it reset the inertia of the Board, putting a new majority to work with a new General Counsel, who has forced Amazon to allow workers to organize throughout their facilities. This was crucial to many (all?) recent Amazon unionization votes. They’ve also forced employers to hire workers fired for organizing.
I’m not finding huge seismic changes in policy - obviously Biden isn’t passing new labor laws even if he wanted to. It just seems like his firing of the General Counsel allowed the NLRB to really hit the ground running and give full support to a wave of grassroots unionization. Nice
Wait I found a seismic change in policy
6 days ago the NLRB released a decision reviving the Joy Silk doctrine. Starting now, the federal government will recognize a union as soon as a majority of employees sign union cards - no election needed. If the employer requests an election (I’m sure they always will), the Board will automatically recognize the union if the employer is found tampering with the process. This means firing organizing workers, intimidation/harassment, etc., will result in an immediate union victory.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call this the biggest change in labor law since the doctrine was killed off in the 70s. I also actually believe that Biden’s NLRB will enforce it. This actually deserves its own post, it’s that huge and it just happened. I’m so glad I did this research lmao
this is a great time to keep in mind that all change is inherently incremental! there is no end goal or standard unit of progress, and it is not possible to snap our fingers and change a system- even the Glorious Revolution would happen in increments.
And the Great Day of (Unproblematic, Uneugenical, Ungenocidal) Revolution, uh, seems to be on the same delivery schedule as the Second Coming of Christ… so increments at least alleviate some human suffering in the immediate present.
Not trying to be argumentative but for perspective, only 9.5% of US workers are members of a union. There’s lots better countries if you want to be envious of strong organized labor
