President-elect Donald Trump courted union voters during his successful 2024 presidential bid, and now Bloomberg reports that his incoming administration is poised to deliver a "body blow" to organized labor that has enjoyed a significant renaissance under President Joe Biden's administration.
While Biden's administration has helped multiple unions score big new contracts and organizing victories, as well as eliminating noncompete clauses that hold workers back, Trump's last National Labor Relations Board was far more hostile to organized labor and his next one could be even more so.
"The last time Trump ran the government, however, he filled key enforcement roles with management-side attorneys who pushed for companies to have more control over workers’ tips, more time to run anti-union campaigns and more discretion over who gets paid overtime," writes Bloomberg, before adding, "Now that he’s had some practice, he’s likely to do more, faster."
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What's more, Bloomberg notes that the GOP blueprint Project 2025 "calls for the loosening of laws governing safety, nondiscrimination and child labor, and floats eliminating public-sector unions" all together.
Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California at Santa Barbara, tells Bloomberg that he expects a second Trump administration will deliver "a warrant for employers to do whatever they want."
But Jennifer Abruzzo, the general counsel for Biden's NLRB, warns that Trump could be playing with fire if he undercuts the work she and her colleagues have done in making life easier for unions.
"I think workers are going to take matters into their own hands," she said.