Last Thursday, President Donald Trump’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced its intention to commit institutional suicide. The NLRB enforces workers’ rights to organize unions and collectively bargain over their wages and working conditions. At the end of January, Trump essentially shut it down by firing one of its members. This leaves the board below the quorum it needs to operate (beyond issues that can be handled by regional offices).
The law creating the NLRB specifies that its members can be fired “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause.” Trump’s decision to fire NLRB board member Gwynne Wilcox blatantly violates this provision. On Wednesday, she filed a lawsuit to get her job back. That issue could be tied up in the courts for a long time to come.
It’s clear that the Trump administration is waging a scorched-earth campaign against organized labor that goes well beyond anything Trump did in his first term.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX has been trying to get the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rule the very existence of the NLRB unconstitutional. A few days ago, the board sent the court a letter indicating that, since it was below the quorum it needed to continue making decisions, it was withdrawing its defense of its own constitutionality. That’s the beginning of the end for the NLRB.
As this was happening, Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) took aim at the other main federal institution that protects workers’ rights, the Labor Department.
As labor reporter Kim Kelly writes, Musk and his team have been “running roughshod over a number of government agencies,” often “seizing access to highly-sensitive information systems, taking down websites and placing thousands of federal employees on leave.” Alarmed by the possibility that similar encroachments on the Labor Department will throw a massive wrench into the enforcement of labor law, a coalition of unions including the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to keep Musk and his subordinates out of the Labor Department’s internal systems.
It remains to be seen how either of these cases will play out. It’s possible that other interested parties will be able to defend the NLRB in court and that, despite the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, the agency’s existence will somehow be preserved. Whatever happens, though, it’s clear that the Trump administration is waging a scorched-earth campaign against organized labor that goes well beyond anything Trump did in his first term.
Then, Trump did what any Republican would have done. As teacher and union activist Paul Prescod wrote at the time, Trump filled the NLRB with appointees who sided with bosses, “delaying … union elections, restricting the ability of employees to communicate about workplace issues, and enhancing the ability of employers to determine bargaining units.” But now he’s going after the basic infrastructure created during the New Deal era to protect the rights of workers to band together to improve their conditions.
Imagine that you’re involved in a union organizing campaign at your workplace, and your boss comes up with some excuse to fire you. This would violate the National Labor Relations Act. But any law is only as good as the enforcement mechanism. The NLRB routinely rules on such complaints, often forcing companies to reinstate illegally fired workers with back pay.
But if this happens to you after Musk’s constitutional challenge goes through (now that Trump has ensured that the NLRB can’t fight back) and the agency is either abolished entirely or stripped of these basic enforcement powers, you might have to wait for years to get action through the regular court system. Even if the trial goes your way and then you get your job back with back pay, how exactly are you supposed to support yourself during however many years it takes for your case to wind its way through the courts? Meanwhile, after your fellow workers have seen what you and your family endured during these years, how likely are any of them to take similar risks?
This assault on the fundamentals of how workers’ rights are protected in the United States makes a mockery of the claim often made by Trump and his supporters in the contexts of debates about tariffs or immigration that Trump is an economic “populist” who stands up for the interests of ordinary people against “elites.” I’m not sure why Democrats think ordinary Americans care about making sure the United States can engage in a sufficiently aggressive battle with China for influence on the internal politics of distant countries. Maddeningly, though, most of Trump’s critics don’t seem to be interested in emphasizing the issue. Instead, Democrats’ opposition to Musk’s interference with the federal government has focused on DOGE’s attack on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). While USAID engages in a number of initiatives, some of which are very beneficial, its function has often been to exercise U.S. “soft power” against disfavored governments around the world. This complements the activities of agencies like the CIA in more directly destabilizing those nations. Indeed, this is precisely the aspect of USAID’s work emphasized by many of its Democratic defenders. On Tuesday, several lawmakers spoke at a rally in defense of USAID against Musk’s attacks, where Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said USAID “supports freedom fighters everywhere in this world” and “chases China around the world.” Democrats’ choosing to focus on defending USAID (and to defend it on the grounds Murphy emphasized) just feeds into the misleading Trumpist narrative that Trump is an “anti-interventionist” who wants to leave the rest of the world alone. I’m not sure why Democrats would think that most ordinary Americans care about making sure that the United States can engage in a sufficiently aggressive battle with China for influence on the internal politics of distant countries. But most Americans do work for a living (or they’re dependents of other people who do). Their rights to claim any kind of dignity or collective power on the job are at stake in Trump’s assault on the NLRB. If Trump’s critics want to show that he’s the furthest thing in the world from a genuine populist, they should be laser-focused on this issue.
Ben Burgis
Ben Burgis is a political commentator and author. He has written articles for Jacobin and The Daily Beast. 
