American Workers Need a Christmas Present from Congress
By Jim Miller
In just a few weeks, a new era of Congressional gridlock will be upon us and progressive hopes for even the most incremental change will take a back seat to at least two years of political trench warfare with Republicans.
Consequently, the national AFL-CIO and others in labor circles are making a final push for Congress to adequately fund the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). This crucial agency has the capacity to aid American workers struggling to organize by enforcing labor laws and worker protections in the face of illegal union busting, but it has been radically underfunded for years, down about 25% factoring in inflation since 2014.
As Labor Notes observed last July, the Biden Administration tried but failed to address this:
The Biden administration had sought a 10 percent funding increase for the NLRB this year. But Republicans dug in to oppose an increase, claiming the cost was too high. Privately many were simply doing the bidding of their corporate backers to further weaken an agency already in trouble. When the overall budget was finally passed in March, the administration had accepted flat funding.
NLRB funding was part of the Build Back Better package that died in the Senate but did not make it into the subsequent Inflation Reduction Act that passed last August. Hence, just as workers are beginning to win more union elections in the face of fierce employer resistance, a hamstrung NLRB does not have the staffing or resources to properly do its job.
This December, the Center for American Progress released a report on the NLRB reinforcing the pressing need to address this issue:
Unions today enjoy record levels of popular support, especially among the members of Generation Z now entering the workforce.1 While this surge in worker interest in union membership has translated to a higher rate of organizing victories, workers’ success depends in no small part on the legal protections for union organizing and collective bargaining established by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA) and administered by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Under appointees from the Biden administration, the agency is wielding its adjudicatory and rule-making authority to undo decisions and regulations that stack the deck in favor of lawbreaking corporations and to ensure that existing law is properly enforced.
However, the NLRB lacks the funds it needs to fulfill its mission. Congress has not increased funding for the agency since 2014—and even this amount was a decline from the peak funding level reached in 2010. Due to the effects of inflation, this flat funding has significantly reduced agency resources; the number of staffers has dropped by 30 percent since 2010. In other words, lawmakers are quietly undermining Americans’ existing bargaining rights by starving the NLRB of essential operating funds.
Knowing this, the National Labor Relations Board Union has been making a push for more funding from Congress during the lame duck session before it is too late to boost their essential agency. Politico’s story on the union’s effort observed that, “the prospect of Republicans grasping power in Congress . . . all but shuts that window of opportunity for at least two years. ‘We have a huge target on our backs,’ Michael Bilik, an NLRB attorney and legislative co-chair for the National Labor Relations Board Union . . . ‘It’s been a top priority of Republicans to prevent us from getting a single dollar of an increase.’"
Thus, it’s game-on as we approach the end of the lame duck session, and the stakes are high for the American labor movement. Indeed, the Center for American Progress report concludes by noting that:
Even in an increasingly divided nation, popular support has coalesced around worker empowerment and union organizing. The NLRB’s agenda for achieving its mission to protect collective bargaining rights under the law aligns with popular sentiment and the Biden administration’s efforts to empower workers and protect the right to organize. Workers want to unionize, and they have done so with increasing success under President Biden’s appointees to the NLRB. Nevertheless, low funding—the consequence of a successful campaign by anti-worker politicians to sabotage the NLRB—continues to harm the agency’s mission to ensure that all American workers can exercise their right to come together in unions. Pro-worker members of Congress must act to make sure that the NLRB receives the funding increases it needs to fulfill its purpose. This mission grows all the more imperative as workers continue to organize their colleagues across the country.
In the wake of the sad spectacle of the Democrats’ betrayal of the railroad workers, delivering a Christmas present to the union movement in the form of a fully funded NLRB is certainly not too much to ask. The question is whether they will come through or end up dumping another lump of coal in American workers’ stockings.
To sign the AFL-CIO letter in support of NLRB funding, go here