Trump Concludes First Term Having Stocked National Labor Relations Board With Management-Side Attorneys Who Reversed More Than A Dozen Pro-Worker Precedents, Resolves Long-Standing Concern That Federal Labor Law Was Being Enforced From The Perspective Of People Who Work For A Living

The Filing

WASHINGTON. Concluding a first term spent quietly remaking the National Labor Relations Board, President Donald Trump on Wednesday handed off to his successor an agency staffed almost entirely with attorneys whose previous clients had filed the very kinds of cases the agency was now deciding, resolving a long-standing concern that federal labor law was being enforced from the perspective of people who worked for a living.

Trump's appointments to the five-member board included William Emanuel, a longtime shareholder at Littler Mendelson, the management-side law firm that has represented roughly every major non-union employer in the country, and John Ring, a partner at Morgan Lewis specializing in helping companies avoid unionization. Their first significant act was issuing the Boeing decision, which dispensed with a 2004 precedent under which workplace policies could be struck down if employees might reasonably read them as chilling protected activity, and replaced it with a balancing test under which most policies survived as long as the employer could think of a business reason for them.

The reversals continued at a steady pace. In December 2019, the Caesars Entertainment decision restored employer rights to ban union organizing on company email systems. The PCC Structurals decision rolled back a 2011 ruling that had let workers in distinct subgroups form smaller bargaining units. The Hy-Brand decision attempted to scrap the joint employer standard under which large companies could be held responsible for the labor practices of their subcontractors, was vacated for ethics violations involving Emanuel, was scrapped again through rulemaking, and arrived in 2020 in a form roughly identical to the original ruling. Across more than a dozen major decisions, the Board substantially narrowed the categories of conduct it would treat as illegal.

"This Board is committed to restoring stability and fairness to American labor relations," said one administration spokesperson, citing the long-standing concern that workers had previously enjoyed too much access to union representation and too much information about their wages relative to those of coworkers. "The American economy works best when employees and employers can negotiate from positions of, respectively, no leverage and complete leverage."

Outside legal scholars noted that under Trump-appointed members the agency ruled in favor of employers in a significantly higher share of contested cases than in any modern presidency, with the General Counsel's office declining or withdrawing complaints that under prior administrations would have moved forward. Sources within the agency confirmed that career staff had been told to interpret existing pro-worker precedents as narrowly as the language permitted, and emerging pro-employer precedents as broadly as the situation might require.

At press time, the incoming administration was assessing whether to undo any of the reversals, while the Trump-appointed General Counsel was preparing a memorandum noting that, as a matter of administrative tradition, his term ran another year and he had no intention of resigning.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump personally, who had spent decades operating Trump Organization properties under management practices that benefited from a defanged federal labor enforcer.
§The Trump Organization, whose hospitality, golf, and real estate operations employed thousands of workers under conditions less likely to draw federal scrutiny.
§The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose member companies had lobbied for precisely this set of reversals for over a decade.
§The National Federation of Independent Business, which had filed amicus briefs urging exactly these outcomes.
§Management-side law firms including Littler Mendelson, Morgan Lewis, and Jackson Lewis, whose alumni now staffed the agency adjudicating their former clients' cases.
§Boeing, whose initial complaint produced the foundational ruling restoring employer-friendly workplace-rule analysis.
§Caesars Entertainment, which regained the right to bar union organizing on company email.
§Amazon and other large employers facing union drives, who benefited from a friendlier regulatory environment during a period of unprecedented worker organizing pressure.
§Private equity firms operating staffing companies, who avoided liability for the labor practices of their portfolio operating entities under the rewritten joint employer standard.
§Anti-union consultants and union avoidance firms, whose services became substantially more effective once the Board treated their tactics as presumptively lawful.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment