As employers head off for the holiday season, Washington delivered a long-awaited gift: a newly reconstituted National Labor Relations Board. Late Thursday night, the Senate confirmed two new NLRB Board members and Crystal Carey as NLRB General Counsel. Taken together, these confirmations signal a decisive pivot away from the most aggressive aspects of the Biden-era labor agenda and set the stage for a significantly different approach to handling cases and enforcement. What should employers expect from the Board in 2026?
How’d We Get Here?
It helps to rewind briefly. For most of 2025, the NLRB lacked a functioning quorum because it must have at least three members to issue decisions. The Board was left with just one member due to the January firing of Gwynne Wilcox, along with expired terms, political gridlock, and delayed confirmations. Effectively sidelined, the Board was unable to address or revise unfavorable precedent even as cases continued to pile up.
Instead, enforcement authority shifted heavily to the Office of the Acting General Counsel and the Board’s 26 regions. Acting leadership pursued policy change through guidance memos, but many controversial Biden-era Board decisions persisted because there was no quorum to revisit them.
For employers that spent much of the past several years navigating whiplash-inducing changes in Board law, a Republican majority should now bring moderation and stability to federal labor law.
New General Counsel Brings Stability
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