Organized Labor Faces Assault Under Trump

Donald Trump. Photo from the White House.

President Donald Trump‘s opposition to organized labor is coming home to roost in Milwaukee.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) appears to be under attack, workers at the Milwaukee Veterans Affairs find themselves in the crosshairs of a proposed budget cut and Transportation Security Association (TSA) employees at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport are facing an attack on their collective bargaining rights.

Recently, Elon Musk‘s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) put the Milwaukee office of the NLRB on a list of real estate leases to be terminated. The NLRB maintains an approximately 10,200-square-foot, subregional office in Milwaukee, according to DOGE records. The NLRB has had an office in Milwaukee continually since 1940s. Between 1964 and 2013 the office was a larger regional office.

Subregional and regional offices oversee union elections, investigate claims of illegal labor practices and can advise local unions or workers attempting to organize a union.

A staff member in the Milwaukee office declined to answer any of Urban Milwaukee’s questions and instead directed the inquiry to a public relations contact based in Washington D.C. Attempts to reach an NLRB spokesperson for comment have gone unanswered. It remains unclear what will happen to staff working out of the office, or any open investigations being conducted locally.

“It seems rather unclear what it means overall,” said Pam Fendt, president of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council AFL-CIO. “But we don’t think it’s good.”

If the office is ultimately shut down and there is no local footprint for the NLRB, the closest office for Milwaukee workers will be Chicago or Minnesota, the latter being the regional office overseeing Milwaukee. The likely result is further delay in NLRB business like elections and investigations, which has a chilling effect on union organizing, Fendt said.

“We look to the NLRB processes to secure collective bargaining rights, because it is the sanctioned way to do so,” said Peter Rickman, president of the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization (MASH). “And also to the NLRB as a way to adjudicate important aspects of representation, of bargaining labor disputes, because they have the machinery to do that.”

Rickman and MASH currently have two open cases before the NLRB for organizing efforts at the Trade Hotel and Lakefront Brewing. These cases, which involve disputed ballots from an election at Lakefront Brewing and charges of unfair labor practices and union busting at the Trade Hotel, are being overseen by the subregional office.

“So, of course, if anything happens to the NLRB, that could be delayed and delayed and delayed,” Rickman said. “And when it comes to union organizing, delay is denial, because workers get frustrated, they quit, they go get other jobs.”

Rickman has often criticized the NLRB-controlled unionization process as a bureaucratic process that can be easily manipulated by employers to defeat union campaigns. But the National Labor Relations Act and NLRB have “occupied the field” and been the legal recourse workers turn to for decades, Rickman said.

Shortly after taking office, Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox from the NLRB board, cutting short a U.S. Senate-confirmed term that was supposed to run until 2028. Her termination rendered the NLRB board without a sufficient quorum to conduct business, effectively rendering the independent agency unable to operate.

Wilcox, the first black woman to sit on the board in its history, recently won a lawsuit charging that her termination was illegal.

“But that doesn’t mean everything’s rosy and it’s back to normal,” Fendt said.

Through remarks by the president, official government actions and key appointments, the Trump administration has clearly staked out its opposition to organized labor. The changes are a severe break from the administration of former President Joe Biden, which oversaw the passage of the PRO Act, which aimed to make it easier for workers to form or join a union.

Trump has praised Musk, the richest man in the world, for firing striking workers. He appointed Lori Chavez-DeRemer to serve as Secretary of the Department of Labor, a separate agency from the NLRB. Chavez-DeRemer was originally promoted as a compromise candidate with organized labor, but has since declined to support a federal minimum wage increase and expressed support for right-to-work laws, during confirmation hearings.

Organized labor has been in decline, and under attack by Republican political leaders and big business interests for decades. In Wisconsin, former Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans in the state Legislature rolled back collective bargaining rights for public sector unions in 2011 with the passage of Wisconsin Act 10. Four years later, many of the same Republican elected officials passed a “right-to-work law,” with support from the state’s largest business lobby the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, allowing private companies to hire non-union workers even when their workplace is unionized.

A similar attack on collective bargaining rights is now issuing from the federal government. On Friday, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the agency would no longer recognize the collective bargaining rights of the nation’s more than 40,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers.

In the order, Noem claimed TSA officers were conducting union-related work more than they were performing screening functions at a majority of airports. By refusing to recognize the collective bargaining rights, TSA officers will lose union protections against being fired.

“The Trump Administration is committed to returning to merit-based hiring and firing policies. ” Noem said in a statement announcing the order.

More than 300 TSA officers and staff are employed at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport and 600 are employed at airports across Wisconsin. Many TSA officers are veterans, according to the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the labor union representing TSA officers. The TSA was created through the Aviation and Transportation Security Act in the months following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley called the order by Noem an “unprovoked attack.”

“They gave as a justification a completely fabricated claim about union officials – making clear this action has nothing to do with efficiency, safety, or homeland security,”Kelley said. “This is merely a pretext for attacking the rights of regular working Americans across the country because they happen to belong to a union.”