by Gabriel Thompsonfor Capital & Main
When Connor Hoby began talking about forming a union with a colleague of Louisville trader Joe, he knew it wasn’t easy. What he didn’t expect was that the campaign would change from a marathon to a race without a finish line.
Two years after Hovey and his colleagues won the union election in Louisville, the union representative fight remains in scope. The progressive reputation grocery chain has filed six challenges with the National Labor Relations Commission after workers voted 48-36 to join Trader Joe United, an independent union. All objections were cast twice. It was initially thrown by the NLRB hearing officer and later by the local director. But last month, when President Donald Trump suddenly fired Biden’s appointee Gwyn Wilcox, and suddenly fired the board of directors that could not control the company’s final appeal, he said. The road stalled again.
Board paralysis prevents thousands of workers like Hovey from seeking relief from institutions that are missioned to enforce workers’ rights, bringing new opportunities for employers to stall the conflict. It was provided. At the same time, due to the lack of functional arbitrators of labor relations, workers and their advocates wonder if it’s time to adopt more confrontational tactics in labor disputes.
“It’s become clear that the NLRB is already underfunded, understaffed and overprofessional,” says Hovey. “now [with the freeze] There may not be any further election decisions for several years. ”
Katherine Clayton is currently a former attorney for the National Labor Relations Committee of Cornell University’s Faculty of Industrial and Labor Relations. Without a functional committee, she said: “You can organize, but if your employer doesn’t agree to recognize unions and bargains, there’s nothing you can do about it. For workers, you can’t go anywhere.”
Trump’s fired Wilcox. 2028represent an extraordinary claim of enforcement against independent institutions. On the same day, Trump fired two commissioners on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the agency left without working either. (Wilcox then submitted Litigation He challenged her dismissal and allegedly violated the very part of the labor laws she had previously enforced. ) The National Labor Commission freeze says that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Amazon lawyers face workforce complaints, the NLRB that the federal alleges is unconstitutional, the court said. This is because it hinders enforcement. Trader Joe’s lawyer also under the NLRB procedure. The NLRB’s unconstitutional.
A spokesperson for the National Labor Relations Committee said the board issued 372 decisions last year but did not respond to questions about the number of cases currently frozen at the board. Amazon has at least eight lawsuits, including appeals to judges’ decisions that ordered new elections in the 6,100 employer warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, due to numerous labor law violations committed by the company during the 2022 campaign. is pending at the board of directors. In January, the NLRB reported that the board had heard of 62 separate cases where an administrative law judge ruled Starbucks had violated labor laws. In addition to fighting the Louisville election, Trader Joe is suing the judge’s finding that the company threatened workers and frozen wages in two organized stores.
The lack of a functional committee exacerbates the backlog of cases at the NLRB, and Karen Sensor, a labor lawyer for Weinberg, Roger & Rosenfeld, has said that cases are currently stagnating at the National Labor Relations Commission. He said he represents the union. “It already felt like it was indefinitely,” she said of the slow pace of the NLRB procedure. “It’s actually the case now.”
Current NLRB paralysis is not at a low level, but affects cases that have reached the board. But it provides a new motivation for employers to appeal low-level cases. Because they know that without a quorum they will eventually stall. The lack of quorum can also open new paths to objections. This happened recently in Philadelphia. For the first time in Philadelphia, Whole Foods workers voted for the union on January 27th, with Trump firing Wilcox. Attorneys for Whole Foods, owned by Amazon, challenged the outcome, alleged in their complaints that the election was not feasible without a board quorum.
For Clayton at Cornell University, the lack of a quorum updates the old debate between labor: is it worth trying to organize within the slowly moving NLRB? “Why do you enter enemy territory?” she asked. “It was the only game in town, but now there’s nothing,” she said, and workers and unions facing non-functional or hostile committees to get what they want. He said he might increasingly choose tactics like strikes. In her departure statement, former National Labor Relations Commission adviser Jennifer Abruzzo said that if Jennifer Abruzzo, a solid proraball figure, does not protect workers’ rights, she expects workers. Write that he is doing it and says,Take the problem to your own hands. ”
Hovey, a Louisville trader Joe worker, came to a similar conclusion after years of union organization. “It’s important to recognize that direct action is the only way to receive the benefits you’re looking for. You can’t rely on government agencies.”
