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People hold "Vote Union Yes!" signs during a protest in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate and the unionization of Amazon.com, Inc. fulfillment center workers at Kelly Ingram Park on March 27, 2021 in Birmingham, Alabama.
(Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
NLRB Rolls Back Trump-Era Policies That Dragged Out Union Elections
"In reversing this rule, the NLRB is leveling the playing field and helping workers," said one pro-labor group.
Aug 24, 2023
Workers who wish to vote on forming a bargaining unit will no longer be held up by rules that were put in place in 2019 by Republican members of the National Labor Relations Board under the Trump administration, as the panel passed a regulation on Thursday that the board chair said represented a return to a "basic principle" of labor protections.
The NLRB's new regulation restores protections put in place in 2014, which ensured union elections would be held swiftly.
Under the new rule, the board said it "will meaningfully reduce the time it takes to get from petition to [union] election in contested elections and will expedite the resolution of any post-election litigation."
The changes include:
- Allowing pre-election hearings to begin more quickly and making them more efficient;
- Distributing election information to employees more quickly; and
- Requiring NLRB regional directors to hold elections at "the earliest date practicable," eliminating a 20-day waiting period.
"It is a basic principle of the National Labor Relations Act that representation cases should be resolved quickly and fairly," said Chairman Lauren McFerran, who criticized her Republican colleagues in 2019 for imposing new rules to delay union voting. "By removing unnecessary delays from the election process, the new rule supports these important goals, and allows workers to more effectively exercise their fundamental rights."
Like the policies announced Thursday, the 2019 changes were made via a direct final rule, without a public comment period. The Republicans on the NLRB at the time extended deadlines related to union elections and added steps to the process.
"Slowing union elections gave companies more time to union-bust under [former Republican President Donald] Trump," said the pro-labor media organization More Perfect Union.
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Workers who wish to vote on forming a bargaining unit will no longer be held up by rules that were put in place in 2019 by Republican members of the National Labor Relations Board under the Trump administration, as the panel passed a regulation on Thursday that the board chair said represented a return to a "basic principle" of labor protections.
The NLRB's new regulation restores protections put in place in 2014, which ensured union elections would be held swiftly.
Under the new rule, the board said it "will meaningfully reduce the time it takes to get from petition to [union] election in contested elections and will expedite the resolution of any post-election litigation."
The changes include:
- Allowing pre-election hearings to begin more quickly and making them more efficient;
- Distributing election information to employees more quickly; and
- Requiring NLRB regional directors to hold elections at "the earliest date practicable," eliminating a 20-day waiting period.
"It is a basic principle of the National Labor Relations Act that representation cases should be resolved quickly and fairly," said Chairman Lauren McFerran, who criticized her Republican colleagues in 2019 for imposing new rules to delay union voting. "By removing unnecessary delays from the election process, the new rule supports these important goals, and allows workers to more effectively exercise their fundamental rights."
Like the policies announced Thursday, the 2019 changes were made via a direct final rule, without a public comment period. The Republicans on the NLRB at the time extended deadlines related to union elections and added steps to the process.
"Slowing union elections gave companies more time to union-bust under [former Republican President Donald] Trump," said the pro-labor media organization More Perfect Union.
Workers who wish to vote on forming a bargaining unit will no longer be held up by rules that were put in place in 2019 by Republican members of the National Labor Relations Board under the Trump administration, as the panel passed a regulation on Thursday that the board chair said represented a return to a "basic principle" of labor protections.
The NLRB's new regulation restores protections put in place in 2014, which ensured union elections would be held swiftly.
Under the new rule, the board said it "will meaningfully reduce the time it takes to get from petition to [union] election in contested elections and will expedite the resolution of any post-election litigation."
The changes include:
- Allowing pre-election hearings to begin more quickly and making them more efficient;
- Distributing election information to employees more quickly; and
- Requiring NLRB regional directors to hold elections at "the earliest date practicable," eliminating a 20-day waiting period.
"It is a basic principle of the National Labor Relations Act that representation cases should be resolved quickly and fairly," said Chairman Lauren McFerran, who criticized her Republican colleagues in 2019 for imposing new rules to delay union voting. "By removing unnecessary delays from the election process, the new rule supports these important goals, and allows workers to more effectively exercise their fundamental rights."
Like the policies announced Thursday, the 2019 changes were made via a direct final rule, without a public comment period. The Republicans on the NLRB at the time extended deadlines related to union elections and added steps to the process.
"Slowing union elections gave companies more time to union-bust under [former Republican President Donald] Trump," said the pro-labor media organization More Perfect Union.
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LATEST NEWS
Sanders Launches Probe After RFK Jr. Stacked Immunization Panel With 'Vaccine Deniers'
"These individuals have already taken steps to upend decades of scientific research and vaccine policy, threatening the health and safety of all Americans," said a letter signed by Sanders and seven other Democratic senators.
Jul 29, 2025
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday launched an investigation into U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s purge of independent experts from a panel on vaccine recommendations.
Last month, Kennedy announced that he was "retiring" all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, commonly known as ACIP, despite promising during his Senate confirmation hearing to keep the committee intact.
At the time, Sanders (I-Vt.)—chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions—warned that "firing independent vaccine experts is a dangerous, unprecedented move that will make it harder for the American people to access vaccines that are safe, effective, and essential to saving lives."
After the firings, Kennedy said, "We're going to bring great people onto the ACIP panel—not anti-vaxxers—bringing people on who are credentialed scientists."
In a letter sent to Kennedy Tuesday, Sanders and seven other Democratic senators said those fears have come to pass. Kennedy, they said, has replaced the panel of experts with "prominent vaccine deniers."
The most prominent of these figures is Dr. Robert Malone, who has described it as "high praise" to be dubbed an "anti-vaxxer."
Malone gained prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic by casting doubt on the illness's severity and baselessly suggesting that the mRNA vaccines used to treat the disease were "causing a form of AIDS."
Earlier this year, Malone also attempted to foment doubt that children had died due to the unprecedented measles outbreak in Texas.
Kennedy also appointed the former leader of his anti-vaccine organization, the Children's Health Defense, Lyn Redwood, a longtime proponent of the false belief that the vaccination for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) causes autism.
Also on the committee is Vicky Pebsworth Debold, founder of the National Vaccine Information Center—one of the longest-running anti-vaccine organizations in America—who has argued that a vaccination caused her child's autism.
ACIP is in charge of examining scientific findings to make recommendations to the public about which vaccines to get and when.
"These individuals," the senators said, "have already taken steps to upend decades of scientific research and vaccine policy, threatening the health and safety of all Americans."
When Kennedy's new handpicked committee met for the first time in late June, the members made substantial changes to vaccine policy and hinted at others coming in the future.
The most significant change they made was the recommendation that Americans receive flu vaccinations free of the preservative thimerosal—which is partially made of mercury and prevents germs and fungi from contaminating batches of vaccines.
Thimerosal, which is a component of many multidose vaccines, has never been found harmful by any scientific study. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provided a document to the committee that included 25 years of studies indicating thimerosal's safety. But that document was removed from the meeting without explanation.
When they questioned ACIP about its removal, the senators say Malone replied that it was "not authorized by the office of the secretary," which the senators concluded meant that Kennedy or one of his staff "had the document taken off CDC’s website."
Instead of credible science, Redwood presented a report likely generated by artificial intelligence, which included many debunked claims about the dangers of thimerosal, and even made reference to a CDC study on the dangers of the preservative that did not exist.
Kennedy's ACIP also determined that it would revise the childhood vaccine schedule that has been in place for decades. That schedule includes vaccines for polio, chickenpox, diphtheria, and tetanus—illnesses that once routinely killed children but have been virtually eradicated by mass immunization.
The recommended vaccine schedule, the senators noted, determines what immunizations are required to be covered by health insurance companies and government programs like Medicaid and Medicare.
"If insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs stop covering vaccines, Americans will be forced to pay out of pocket," the senators said. "The only people who will be able to afford vaccines will be the wealthy."
The senators warned that this, along with Kennedy and his appointees' undermining of vaccine science, would result in "a resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases."
Under Kennedy, the U.S. has already experienced its largest measles outbreak in 33 years, which has resulted in the first deaths from the disease in over a decade, following a downswing in measles vaccination.
Despite this, Kennedy has continued to downplay the disease's severity and the vaccine's well-documented effectiveness, even claiming that it causes "deaths every year."
The senators demanded that Kennedy provide information about why each of the nonpartisan members of ACIP were fired, and what criteria and vetting process was used to pick the anti-vaccine figures who replaced them.
"The harm your actions will cause is significant," the senators told Kennedy. "As your new ACIP makes recommendations based on pseudoscience, fewer and fewer Americans will have access to fewer and fewer vaccines. And as you give a platform to conspiracy theorists, and even promote their theories yourself, Americans will continue to lose confidence in whatever vaccines are still available."
Third DOJ Whistleblower Unveils New Allegations That Bove Misled Senate About Adams Case
"What will come out next about Bove?" said one senator as a confirmation vote loomed. "That's precisely the problem with this disaster of a nominee. And why Senate Republicans are rushing through his nomination."
Jul 29, 2025
With the U.S. Senate poised to vote as early as Tuesday on Trump administration official Emil Bove's nomination for a lifetime appointment as a federal judge, a third whistleblower came forward with information about Bove's conduct at the Department of Justice and Democratic senators made their latest push to stop his confirmation.
As The Washington Post reported, a whistleblower shared evidence with lawmakers that Bove, the principal associate deputy attorney general and a former personal attorney to President Donald Trump, misled the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding his role in the DOJ's dismissal of corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
During his confirmation hearing in June, Bove told senators that U.S. District Judge Dale Ho granted the DOJ's motion to dismiss the Adams case because it "reflected a valid exercise of prosecutorial discretion."
He denied the existence of the DOJ deal with Adams to drop the charges in exchange for the mayor's cooperation with Trump's mass deportation agenda, saying that "the suggestion that there was some kind of quid pro quo was just plain false."
The decision to drop the charges led several prosecutors to resign from the DOJ in protest.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee and condemned Republicans' decision to advance Bove's nomination earlier this month, first received evidence from the third whistleblower, according to the Post. Several other Democrats have also reviewed the evidence, which Booker told the outlet was "significant."
"We have substantial information relevant to the truthfulness of the nominee," Booker said on the Senate floor, calling on Republicans on the committee to review the new evidence.
"Another whistleblower has come forward with evidence that raises serious concerns with Emil Bove's misconduct. Senate Republicans will bear full responsibility for the consequences if they rubber stamp Mr. Bove's nomination."
Lawyers for the anonymous whistleblower told the Post on Tuesday that they had turned over the new information provided by the person to the DOJ inspector general.
Booker was joined by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Tuesday in calling on the DOJ's inspector general to promptly open an investigation into Bove in light of the latest whistleblower complaint.
"In the event these whistleblower complaints and other reports have not already prompted investigations by your office, we urge you to undertake a thorough review of these disclosures and allegations," said the lawmakers.
Two other whistleblowers have come forward in recent weeks, alleging Bove told DOJ lawyers to ignore court orders that would impede Trump's mass deportation agenda. Former DOJ attorneys and federal and state judges have urged the Senate to oppose his nomination.
Schiff condemned Republicans on the committee for attempting to dismiss the whistleblowers' complaints.
"What will come out next about Bove?" said Schiff. "That's precisely the problem with this disaster of a nominee. And why Senate Republicans are rushing through his nomination. Before more disqualifying information can come out."
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) emphasized that the fight to stop Bove's confirmation "isn't over, even when subservient Senate Republicans ignore another whistleblower and shove this character through their new-low, hide-the-ball Senate confirmation process and onto the bench."
Republicans can afford to lose only three votes for Bove and still confirm him with a tie-breaker vote from Vice President JD Vance. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) are expected to oppose him.
Josh Sorbe, a spokesperson for Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the Judiciary Committee's ranking member, said the latest complaint is "another damning indictment of a man who should never be a federal judge."
"Another whistleblower has come forward with evidence that raises serious concerns with Emil Bove's misconduct," said Sorbe. "Senate Republicans will bear full responsibility for the consequences if they rubber stamp Mr. Bove's nomination."
Rail Labor Leaders Raise Alarm Over Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern Megamerger
"Our labor organization has every intention to oppose this merger," said SMART-TD, America's largest railroad operating union.
Jul 29, 2025
Major unions on Tuesday slammed plans for an $85 billion merger between railway giants Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific.
As The New York Times reported, the proposed merger would have the benefit of creating the first rail network in the U.S. that would span from coast to coast and would run through 43 different states by linking Norfolk Southern's eastern railroads with Union Pacific's western rail network.
On the downside, however, it would represent a massive consolidation of the American rail industry by giving one corporation control of roughly 40% of rail freight throughout the U.S., and it was immediately panned by labor leaders as bad for railway workers.
SMART Transportation Division (SMART-TD), America's largest railroad operating union, said that "our labor organization has every intention to oppose this merger when it comes before the Surface Transportation Board for approval."
The union specified multiple concerns about the deal, including what it described as Union Pacific's "troubling safety record" under its current management.
"Publicly available data from recent years reveals [Union Pacific] leads the industry in accidents, incidents, injuries, and fatalities," the union said. "This trend reflects a broader corporate culture that, in our view, prioritizes aggressive operating ratios over worker and public safety."
SMART-TD also criticized Union Pacific for having "a pattern of disengagement and hostility" toward labor relations, while also expressing concerns that Norfolk Southern, which it describes as having "more progressive labor and operation policies," could adopt Union Pacific's tactics under a merger.
The Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen (BRS) raised similar concerns about worker safety and laid out a list of demands that would have to be met before it would give the merger its blessing. Namely, the union said that "safety standards must be strengthened not sidelined, in the name of efficiency," and that "signal staffing must not be cut further." BRS also demanded "direct labor consultation during all phases of integration" and "enforceable safety guarantees and transparency in operational changes."
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