A Trump appointee at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been reversing pro-union moves the agency made during the Biden administration.
William B. Cowen was appointed Feb. 3 to serve as acting general counsel of the NLRB while Trump’s permanent nominee for the job, Crystal Carey, awaits Senate confirmation. The NLRB administers union certification elections and tries to protect private sector workers’ right to unionize and take collective action. The general counsel directs staff at NLRB field offices and makes recommendations on how the Board should interpret the law with binding precedent-setting decisions on cases.
General counsels direct their staff and telegraph their plans to the Board via memos. Cowen’s first memo, issued Feb. 14, was a bitter Valentine for labor, rescinding 30 memos issued by his predecessor Jennifer Abruzzo.
As a result the NLRB once again won’t recognize college athletes as employees with union and won’t pursue unfair labor practice charges against employers for maintaining non-compete agreements, among other changes.
The memo also signals that Cowen will seek to overturn two landmark Biden-era Board decisions. One, known as the Cemex decision, made it harder for an employer to insist on a union election when it was clear a union had majority support. The other, Amazon.com Services, had just been issued in November 2024; it banned mandatory attendance “captive audience” anti-union meetings. For now, those two rulings stand.
Cowen didn’t say the Abruzzo memos were bad, just that they contributed to a case backlog at the understaffed agency.
“The unfortunate truth is that if we attempt to accomplish everything, we risk accomplishing nothing,” Cowen wrote.
