Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna took aim at his own party this week, accusing Democrats in the U.S. Senate of a bumbling failure to secure a majority on the federal board that safeguards workers’ rights to form unions and negotiate collectively for contracts with employers.
A procedural “unforced error by Democrats” has cost them a majority on the five-member National Labor Relations Board that would have lasted the first two years of President-elect Donald Trump’s term, Khanna charged.
“This is a huge setback for the hundreds of thousands of workers across this country organizing for a better contract,” he said in an X post Tuesday. “It will hurt the young folks organizing at Starbucks and the workers organizing at Amazon. It’s inexcusable and inexplicable.”
Khanna, who has represented California’s 17th congressional district since 2017, isn’t the only one who sees huge ramifications for the shift in power on the board.
“This is a big deal,” said UC Berkeley Labor Center senior policy adviser Ken Jacobs. “Last time Trump was in the White House and had his people in control of the board, they put in a pretty big number of important rulings that narrowed the scope of protected activity and made it harder for workers to organize and collectively bargain.”
Khanna noted that during the administration of President Joe Biden, America has seen a surge in union organizing. The labor relations board in October reported that petitions it received to form unions rose 27% last fiscal year over fiscal year 2023.
But amid this boost in union interest, in mid-December, Democratic labor-relations board chair Lauren McFerran’s term was about to expire. Re-nominating McFerran and forging a two-year Democratic majority on the board should have been easy, Khanna suggested, since Sen. Bernie Sanders (Independent-VT) had already cleared it.
However, Khanna said on X, “the Dems fumbled it.”
Four days before McFerran’s term was to end, Senate Democrats had a chance to push through a nomination vote for her, setting the stage for her confirmation via a second vote, Khanna said. Republican senators J.D Vance of Ohio and Pat Roberts of Kansas were absent, along with former Democrat and now Independent Joe Manchin, according to Khanna.
“But we delayed the vote (for what I’m hearing described as ‘no reason’) until Vance and Manchin returned, deadlocking the vote at 49-49,” Khanna said.
As the clock ticked on for an hour and a half, Manchin and Vance came back and swung the tally. It was a deadlock: 49 votes to 49.
“We then failed to get word to Vice President Harris quickly enough to come and deliver the tie-breaking vote,” said Khanna, who declined this week to elaborate on his report, saying his posts spoke for themselves. Just-retired Manchin and Vice President-elect Vance could not be reached for comment. Manchin told news-site Semafor he voted against McFerran over her support for a regulation — struck down last year by a Texas federal court — that expanded employer liability for companies using contractors.
In response to questions about Khanna’s statements, an aide for Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer noted Khanna had followed up on X by saying he had talked to Schumer and believed the minority leader did “everything he could to get Ms. McFerran confirmed to the NLRB.”
With another board seat open, Trump will get to appoint two Republicans after his inauguration, Jacobs said.
The board is charged with enforcing the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, intended to enable workers to organize and negotiate collectively with employers. Under Biden, the board vigorously promoted that goal, Jacobs said.
“We can expect that to be reversed under the Trump administration,” Jacobs said.
In recent months, the board has taken significant actions and received consequential complaints related to Silicon Valley companies. In November, the board filed a complaint against Cupertino i-Phone maker Apple, accusing it of quashing employee discussions about compensation and remote work. In May, dozens of former Google workers filed a complaint with the board after they were fired or placed on administrative leave for protesting the company’s cloud-computing contract with Israel’s government. In January, the board found Google and staffing company Cognizant had broken labor laws by failing to recognize and bargain with unionized workers.
Bitter unionization fights pitting workers against Starbucks and Amazon have also played out before the board, which in December alone sided with Starbucks employees in four disputes over union organizing and wage discussions. In November, the board found Amazon had engaged in anti-labor practices, including threats to withhold raises and benefit-improvements during Amazon workers’ collective bargaining.
In July, the board ordered Trader Joe’s to reinstate a worker fired after she filed a complaint with the board over the company’s response to her complaints about worker safety. The board has also accused Elon Musk-led rocket company SpaceX of illegally firing eight employees for raising concerns about purported workplace sexual harassment and discrimination. SpaceX, in a filing with the board, has denied the claims. The board has another 11 open cases against the company, along with nine open cases against Tesla, also led by Musk.
SpaceX, Trader Joe’s, Amazon and Starbucks, all embroiled in unionization battles, are asking federal courts to declare the board unconstitutional.
Harbir Bhatia, CEO of the Silicon Valley Central Chamber of Commerce, noted that those major companies “feel the National Labor Relations Board makes judgments with little judicial review, and is not authorized.” Federal government actions on labor should be planned carefully, as labor laws, immigration policy, tariffs, union activities, the cost of living and availability of workers “are all interconnected and will affect each other,” Bhatia said.
The expected swerve by the labor relations board under Trump toward the interests of big business and away from workers is not likely to halt the upsurge in union organizing, Jacobs said, but “it’ll be harder for workers to both win (union) recognition and gain first contracts.”
