STATEMENT: DEMOCRATS HANDED THE NLRB TO TRUMP. AMBITIOUS, WORKER-LED ORGANIZING IS THE WAY FORWARD.
For Immediate Release: December 12, 2024
Contact: press@socialists.nyc
STATEMENT: DEMOCRATS HANDED THE NLRB TO TRUMP. AMBITIOUS, WORKER-LED ORGANIZING IS THE WAY FORWARD.
On December 11, the US Senate voted 50-49 to reject Biden’s nominations–Lauren McFerran and Joshua Ditelberg–to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), handing control of the Board to Trump.
Despite the Biden administration’s failures—from not passing the PRO Act or advancing Build Back Better to enabling genocide in Gaza—its NLRB has been undoing the wrongs of the Trump Board by consistently issuing pro-worker rulings that make organizing easier, such as banning captive audience meetings, expanding union rights to new categories of workers, and going after union-busting employers. Trump’s NLRB, by contrast, was a disaster for working-class people, extending management rights in the workplace around employee discipline, conducting union elections, and bargaining contracts. Now, we are set to return to this pro-corporate, anti-worker paradigm.
Despite the Republican Party’s cynical attempt to rebrand as the “party of workers,” not one Republican Senator voted to preserve a pro-labor NLRB. Senator Josh Hawley, often touted as this movement’s figurehead, recently declared “in the choice between labor and capital, [Republicans must] start prioritizing the workingman,” but bucked the AFL-CIO in voting no.
While the Republican stance may come as no surprise, the Democratic Party’s handling of the NLRB nominations amounted to malpractice. Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, who once stated “for every blue-collar Democrat we lose in Western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia,” had to be pressured to even bring this vote to the floor. NYC-DSA is proud to have directed hundreds of constituent calls and emails to the senator’s office to make Schumer act.
However, in begrudgingly calling the vote and expending little effort or political capital to whip majority support, Schumer allowed independent Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin to split and cast decisive no votes. This was the logical end of the Democrats’ years-long capitulation to these corporate lackeys, but it was not an inevitable outcome. Both Sinema and Manchin previously voted to confirm McFerran’s prior Board term. They evidently reversed their positions this time after facing a coordinated onslaught of pressure from the political arm of Capital. Billionaire-backed institutions including the Federalist Society, Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity, and the Heritage Foundation, recognizing the threat that organized labor poses to their interests, mobilized swiftly in the days after Schumer scheduled the vote to achieve this result—with no substantial Democratic opposition.
Although a Trump NLRB will make organizing more difficult, unions can still fight and win major victories. Our power is in our numbers and our unity. From steel workers facing down the hired guns of Pinkertons, to the teachers organizing the 2018 strike wave against austerity that swept across several red states under the first Trump administration, workers have made transformative gains under hostile conditions. Even now, unions such as the UAW, Starbucks Workers United, IBT-Amazon Labor Union, and others are all-in on bold, new organizing. NYC-DSA will continue to stand with these workers, whose struggles are those of the whole working class.
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ABOUT NYC-DSA: New York City Democratic Socialists is the NYC local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the United States with over 85,000 members. NYC-DSA is run by its 6,500+ members who are working together to build a New York that works for the working class in the five boroughs.