Too radical or not radical enough? US’s top labor lawyer in the spotlight
As the Biden administration lays claim to being themost pro-union in generations, many US labor leaders have hailed Jennifer Abruzzo as the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) most vigorously pro-union general counsel in decades.
The top lawyer at the body charged with enforcing US labor law has been hailed as a champion by some and as a “radical” by her opponents. For others involved in the white-hot world of union organizing, she has not gone far enough.
Abruzzo’s bona fides are clear. She has repeatedly urged the NLRB’s five-person board to adopt new policies that would make it easier to unionize. She wants the board to prohibit so-called captive audience meetings in which Amazon and many other companies require employees to listen to anti-union speeches from managers and consultants. She wants the board to require employers to grant union recognition once a majority of workers sign cards saying they want a union.
The NLRB is the federal agency that oversees and referees unionization efforts and collective bargaining in America’s private sector. Its general counsel serves essentially as a prosecutor who cracks down on labor law violations, for instance, on companies that fire workers for supporting a union or on unions that engage in illegal picketing.
With a Republican Senate filibuster blocking Joe Biden’s push for legislation to make it easier to unionize, many unions and workers are looking to the NLRB’s board and Abruzzo to make it happen instead – especially after the labor board under Donald Trump moved to undermine unions in various ways.
As general counsel, Abruzzo has hit Starbucks particularly hard, filing an extraordinary number of complaints over its anti-union tactics – a total of 19 complaints accusing
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