Workers Need NLRB That Respects Their Rights

Expulsion of Biden-Selected Chairman Creates an Opportunity

Along with millions of other citizens who strongly opposed the tyranny of union-label President Joe Biden’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), National Right to Work Committee members and supporters across America scored an important incremental victory a couple of weeks before Christmas. 

This win for opponents of compulsory unionism occurred after voters had already dealt a solid 312-226 Electoral College defeat to Big Labor Vice President Kamala Harris, who was seeking to succeed Mr. Biden, in the 2024 presidential race. Simultaneously, voters had handed avowed supporters of Right to Work operational control over both chambers of Congress. 

Despite suffering defeats across the board at the polls last fall, top union bosses like AFL-CIO chief Liz Shuler and United Auto Workers union kingpin Shawn Fain anticipated they would be able to retain control over the powerful, five-member NLRB for nearly another two years.

Aware of Biden NLRB’s Ill Repute, Charles Schumer Planned Post-Election Vote 

Back in May of 2024, roughly seven months before the term of rabidly anti-Right to Work NLRB member Lauren McFerran was set to expire, Mr. Biden had nominated her for another five-year term. (One of Mr. Biden’s first acts as President had been to elevate Ms. McFerran to the NLRB chairmanship.) 

Well aware that the radical actions of Ms. McFerran and her NLRB cohorts were deeply unpopular in Right to Work Arizona and Nevada, two 2024 battlegrounds for control of the Senate, union-label Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) delayed bringing the McFerran nomination to the floor. But during the “lame-duck” Senate session held after the voters had had their say, but before the new Congress was seated, soon-to-be Minority Leader Schumer was eager to bring to fruition the Biden scheme to keep Ms. McFerran on the board for an additional five years while he still could. 

Mr. Schumer scheduled for December 11 cloture votes paving the way for the confirmation of Ms. McFerran and another Biden NLRB nominee. 

If both nominees had been confirmed, members who share Mr. Biden’s virulently anti-Right to Work ideology would have continued to hold a majority of seats on the board for another 20 months, at a bare minimum.

Almost immediately after Mr. Schumer first publicly announced his intent on November 23 to bring the two pending Biden NLRB nominations to the Senate floor during the Senate’s lame-duck session, the Committee and its members went to work to block him from pushing Ms. McFerran through. 

Right to Work Grassroots Mobilization, Media Campaign Helped Thwart Schumer Scheme

Mail and digital messages from the Committee mobilized thousands of members and supporters to sign petitions urging their senators to oppose the McFerran nomination on all votes. They were all delivered to Capitol Hill in advance of the December 11 cloture vote. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Mix publicly blasted the nomination and called on senators to oppose it in broadcast media interviews and in an op-ed published on the morning before the cloture vote by the Federalist, a journal widely followed by Capitol Hill staff. 

Thanks in part to the alarm sounded by the Committee, every single GOP senator except for Kansas’s Roger Marshall, who was having previously scheduled orthopedic surgery, was present for the vote, and all present voted “No.” Joined by two of the chamber’s four Independents, Republican senators were consequently able to prevent Mr. Schumer from securing cloture, 50-49. 

Mr. Mix commented: “Lauren McFerran deserved to be evicted from the NLRB in large part because she headed a board majority that refused to protect legal rights that American workers are supposed to have under federal statutes and the Constitution, whenever those rights proved to be inconvenient for Big Labor. 

“The most egregious example of all is the Biden board’s 2023 decision in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific.” 

Radical Biden NLRB Helped Union Dons Block Secret-Ballot Votes 

Cemex handed Big Labor sweeping power to impose itself on workers without their ever being allowed to vote in a secret-ballot election, despite innumerable court precedents stating that secret-ballot elections are the preferred means under federal law to assess where workers stand on unionization. 

Another Biden NLRB power grab changed the rules to prevent workers from obtaining a secret-ballot vote to remove a union that was installed without such a vote in the first place until after a year or more has gone by. 

‘Conservatives’ Allied With Big Labor Press For GOP Sellout of Right to Work 

To an alarming extent, worker rights such as the right to vote out an unwanted union existed on paper only under the Biden NLRB, but relief for beleaguered employees and small business owners could be on the way soon — if the incoming Trump Administration commits itself to a genuinely pro-worker agenda. 

Unfortunately, self-styled “conservatives” such as former Mitt Romney staffer Oren Cass and the Beltway nonprofit he heads, American Compass, are now suggesting to Trump advisers that the returning President’s NLRB picks should be “friendly” to Big Labor. 

Effectively, that means “not committed to defending workers’ individual rights.” 

Teamster czar Sean O’Brien, who now styles himself as a Trump ally despite the fact that the union he heads refused to endorse Mr. Trump last year, even as internal polling showed roughly 60% of the Teamster rank-and-file favored Mr. Trump over Ms. Harris, has become this faction’s standard bearer. 

“According to the warped perspective of Sean O’Brien, ‘pro-worker’ and ‘pro-forced unionism’ are the same thing,” said Mr. Mix. 

“But the overwhelming majority of Americans strongly disagree. 

“A scientific nationwide poll conducted for the Committee last year by RMG Research showed 82% of all registered voters, 80% of all working-class voters, and 79% of actively employed union members support the Right to Work principle. 

“Donald Trump won his remarkable effort to return to the White House last year by appealing to the sense of fairness and economic aspirations of tens of millions of Americans, not by pandering to power-hungry and cynical union bosses like Sean O’Brien. 

“Speaking on behalf of Right to Work members across the nation, I encourage the incoming President to remember that as he decides whom to nominate for the two open seats on the NLRB.” 

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