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California, under a law taking effect Jan. 1, seeks to uphold the labor and unionization rights of private-sector employees, as the federal agency that has held that power for decades is in limbo.
But the new law’s future is unclear because the Trump administration is challenging it.
The law, which grants more powers to the California Public Employment Relations Board, is a response to the National Labor Relations Board lacking a quorum.
President Donald Trump fired the NLRB’s chairperson, Gwynne Wilcox, days after he began his second term in January. His two nominees to the board have yet to be confirmed, so the federal board has been without the three members it needs for a quorum for months.
Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, the Inglewood Democrat who wrote the bill, said when the governor signed it in September that “California will not sit idly as its workers are systematically denied the right to organize due to employer intransigence or federal inaction.”
The NLRB sued California over the law in October, saying in its lawsuit that the state is trying to assert authority over “areas explicitly reserved for federal oversight.”
On the legal challenge to the law, Terry Schanz, McKinnor’s chief of staff, referred CalMatters to the state attorney general. Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office is responsible for defending the law in court. A spokesperson for Bonta said the office would have...
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