Union organizing has doubled in the last two years, at least according to one metric: The number of union election petitions filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The NLRB is the federal agency that’s responsible for holding elections in the workplace when private sector workers want to unionize. On Oct. 15, the NLRB reported that it had received 3,286 union election petitions in the 2024 federal fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. That’s more than double the 1,638 petitions the agency received in the 2022 fiscal year.
Employer lawbreaking was also up in FY 2024, the agency said: The NLRB received 21,292 unfair labor practice charges, the highest total case intake in a decade.
“The surge in cases we’ve received in the last few years is a testament to workers knowing and exercising their rights under the National Labor Relations Act and to our board agents’ accessibility and respectful engagement with them,” said NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo in a press statement.
The increased workload comes as the NLRB continues to suffer from funding and staffing shortages. Today the agency has just 754 staff nationwide, down from 1,222 in 2011. The NLRB got a one-time budget boost of $25 million in 2023 after a nine-year budget freeze, but Congress froze its budget at the new level once again in 2024.
