News
In the Aug. 18, 2025, edition of Bloomberg Law, Labor & Employment Principal Meredith Kirshenbaum says that union organizing activity could pick back up in the coming months.
The article, “Unions ‘Wait and See’ on Elections as Trump Upends Labor Arena,” concerns the significant drop in union elections and petitions to the National Labor Relations Board in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s second term, showing that organized labor is wary of risking disputes that could lead to unfavorable rulings with broader implications.
The article reports that new NLRB data reveal a “wait and see” moment, as organized labor and the nation’s workers assess how Trump will treat new unions. The board has been undergoing pivotal changes, beginning with the firing of Biden’s general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo and Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox.
That political uncertainty, coupled with a volatile economy and labor market, could have workers second-guessing whether they’re ready to stick their necks out for collective action, the data show.
The average number of newly certified unions per month dropped 22.3 percent between January and July 2025, compared to the last six months of the Biden administration, according to data from the NLRB’s monthly election reports. There has also been a 15.8 percent drop in the number of representation petitions filed in the first half of fiscal year 2025 compared to the same period last fiscal year.
Post Labor Boom
This year’s organizing slump stands in stark contrast to the previous three years, where the NLRB saw historic numbers of representation petitions, union elections, and unfair labor practice charges filed each year. Some organizing efforts that hinged on a progressive interpretation of labor law were cut short, even before Trump took office.
The NLRB now sits without a quorum after Trump fired Wilcox in late January 2025. While many of its duties continue at the regional level, the agency can’t issue binding decisions in ULP cases or disputes over an election.
Many unions and organizers were emboldened under Abruzzo and the Democratic-majority board. Abruzzo had pushed the board to impose monetary remedies against employers who refuse to bargain, categorize political protests as protected activity under labor law, and clamp down on restrictive covenants like non-compete agreements. The board agreed with her to overturn decades of precedent on issues like captive audience meetings, card-check union recognition, and potentially coercive employer statements.
Goldberg Kohn’s Meredith Kirshenbaum, an employer-side attorney, says in the article that “Unions may have anticipated employers challenging the certification of election results and using the lack of board quorum to their advantage to lengthen certification proceedings, but organizing activity could pick back up in the coming months.”
Public Sector Effects
The Bloomberg Law article concludes by reporting that labor disputes involving federal-sector workers have skyrocketed.
Trump signed executive orders to exclude two-thirds of the federal workforce from collective bargaining rights and demanded a widespread restructuring of the government that could force layoffs and resignations of tens of thousands of workers. Organized labor has gone to court over the terminations, workers’ collective bargaining rights, and initiatives that shutter agencies.
Also, while some of the biggest unions in the fight exclusively represent public-sector workers, many are a blend of public and private members. This includes the Service Employees International Union and the American Geophysical Union, which signed on to a lawsuit headed by the American Federation of Government Employees to allege that Trump’s reduction-in-force plans amount to an unlawful reorganization of the federal government. Meanwhile, The American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors sued when Trump withheld millions in funding for Columbia University and eliminated income-driven student loan repayment programs.
