Trump idles National Labor Relations Board with two firings — and other labor news
Take a seat in the Break Room, our weekly round up of labor news in Minnesota and beyond. This week: Trump kneecaps the NLRB; union membership declines nationally; union membership tied to longer life expectancy; and Deer River workers reach deal after 50-day strike.
President Donald Trump ousted National Labor Relations Board Member Gwynne Wilcox on Monday in an unprecedented move that paralyzes the board while teeing up a constitutional challenge that could further weaken it.
With Wilcox gone, the five-seat board now has just two members and lacks the necessary quorum to hear cases on alleged unfair labor practices in the private sector (although functions lower down in the agency may continue).
NLRB members are supposed to be shielded from presidential removal, and Wilcox — a Biden appointee and one of two Democratic members — says she plans to challenge her removal. NLRB members may only be fired for neglect or malfeasance, and Wilcox was supposed to serve until 2028. But as Bloomberg reported, Trump ally Elon Musk's SpaceX has argued that the restriction on firing NLRB members is unconstitutional as part of a broad assault on the board by businesses including Starbucks, Amazon and Trader Joe's.
Trump also fired NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, which was expected and in line with presidential transitions. The general counsel runs the enforcement arm of the agency, and Abruzzo — who spent her career at the agency — was one of the fiercest advocates for workers in Biden's administration. She pushed for banning mandatory anti-union 'captive audience' meetings, ending noncompete agreements and expanding workers' freedom of speech at work.
'These moves will make it easier for bosses to violate the law and trample on workers' legal rights on the job and fundamental freedom to organize,' AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler wrote in a statement decrying the firings.
In Trump's first term, the NLRB general counsel was Peter Robb, who served as President Ronald Reagan's lead counsel during the air traffic controllers' strike in 1981, which was as a momentous defeat for organized labor.
Attorney Matt Bruenig, who writes a newsletter following the NLRB, published the termination letter sent to Wilcox and NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. The letter cites a part of the Constitution that conservatives believe empowers the president to remove NLRB board members. Bruenig also notes that the letter refers to both of them as board 'members' and 'commissioners' even though Abruzzo was the general counsel.
Trump has sent somewhat mixed messages on labor in his second term. His pick for Labor Secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, was celebrated by the Teamsters and other unions.
Union membership slipped to a record, single-digit low of 9.9% nationally, only a hair down from 10% in 2023 but nevertheless a symbolic milestone in labor's decades-long decline. In Minnesota, union membership ticked back up nearly a percentage point to 14.2%, returning to 2022 levels, according to federal data released on Tuesday.
The decline comes despite the union-friendly Biden administration processing a surge in petitions for union representation and taking on major corporations like Starbucks and Amazon for union busting. Now, organized labor must confront an administration much more hostile toward unions and an idled National Labor Relations Board, which oversees private-sector unions.
Four decades ago, the union membership rate was twice what it is today: Roughly 20% of the American workforce were members of a union in 1983, the first year comparable BLS data is available. Other data show union density was as high as 33% in 1945.
The decline of union power since the 1980s has coincided with stagnating wages in many sectors and a rise in economic inequality, now higher than it's ever been since the Great Depression. Research by the progressive Economic Policy Institute shows union workers earn about 10.2% more in hourly wages, and even nonunion workers benefit in highly unionized industries.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Minnesota finds that union membership is a key predictor of mortality. Using data from the longest running longitudinal data set in the country, Tom VanHeuvelen and his coauthors found that each additional year that someone spent as a union member was associated with about 1.5% lower odds of mortality after the age of 40. That appears to be about half as powerful as employment in general, which VanHeuvelen notes is remarkable given how important work is as a determinant of health.
'In addition to higher wages, unions also provide a wide range of superior benefits to otherwise less powerful workers: health insurance, time off and a pension, occupational security, a path for upward attainment, and workplace safety, to name a few,' VanHeuvelen wrote in a commentary in the Reformer.
Some 70 workers approved a deal with Essentia Health's Deer River hospital on Sunday, ending the longest strike in more than 40 years for SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa. The unionized workers — nursing assistants, phlebotomists and other support staff — were on strike for 49 days before reaching the deal.
Meanwhile, union nurses at Essentia's Sandstone hospital voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike after stalling on negotiations that began in July. The vote gives the nurses the power to call an unfair labor practices strike with a 10-day notice.
The Deer River agreement includes 12% across the board raises over the three-year contract, additional market adjustments for pharmacy techs and cooks, and an increased bonus for returning to work with less than 10 hours between shifts. Under the agreement, Essentia will also have to raise the pay of current workers if they hire new workers with the same qualifications at a higher wage.
'I'm so proud of our membership for sticking together. Despite the many cold days on the strike line we became a family,' said Becky Shereck, a radiologic technologist at Essentia for 16 years.
Essentia's executives have received massive bonuses in recent years. CEO David Herman received $1 million in 2022 and 2023, pushing his total compensation above $3 million and making him one of the highest paid health care executives in the state.
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