The National Labor Relations Board has sued California to block a law that empowers a state agency to oversee some private-sector labor disputes and union elections.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 288 into law last month in response to the Trump administration’s hampering of federal regulators. It gives the state’s Public Employment Relations Board the ability to step in and oversee union elections, charges of workplace retaliation and other issues in the event the federal labor board is unable, or declines, to decide cases.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, argues the law usurps the NLRB’s authority “by attempting to regulate areas explicitly reserved for federal oversight.”
The lawsuit echos the NLRB’s challenge to a recent New York law that similarly seeks to expand the powers of its state labor board.
NLRB attorneys contend in the lawsuits that the laws create parallel regulatory systems that conflict with federal labor law.
The NLRB is tasked with safeguarding the right of private employees to unionize or organize in other ways to improve their working conditions.
Lawmakers in New York and California said they passed their bills to fill a gap, because the NLRB has been functionally paralyzed since January, when President Trump fired one of its Democratic board members. The unprecedented firing of that member, Gwynne Wilcox, left the board without the three-member quorum it needs to rule on cases.
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