Did the Trump administration change rules to help employers contest unionization efforts?
The National Labor Relations Board in late 2019 updated rules governing union-organizing efforts to lengthen timetables, allowing more time for employers to contest the merits and scope of efforts by workers to gain union representation. The new rule did not roll back all of a set of union-friendly changes made in 2014 under the Obama administration, but was “nonetheless an improvement for employers,” an Iowa employment lawyer noted.
Bloomberg Law notes that the impact of the changes in 2020 was clouded by a legal challenge to their implementation and by disruptions from the pandemic. Even so, the union “win” rate fell in 2020 to 70% from 75% the prior year, and was the lowest since 2014. The data lend support to the idea that “shorter elections favor unions while longer ones help management,” it reported.
