Jennifer Abruzzo would like to ease the path to forming unions and curb employers’ coercion and intimidation
As the Biden administration lays claim to being the most pro-union in generations, many US labor leaders have hailed Jennifer Abruzzo as the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) most vigorously pro-union general counsel in decades.
The top lawyer at the body charged with enforcing US labor law has been hailed as a champion by some and as a “radical” by her opponents. For others involved in the white-hot world of union organizing, she has not gone far enough.
Abruzzo’s bona fides are clear. She has repeatedly urged the NLRB’s five-person board to adopt new policies that would make it easier to unionize. She wants the board to prohibit so-called captive audience meetings in which Amazon and many other companies require employees to listen to anti-union speeches from managers and consultants. She wants the board to require employers to grant union recognition once a majority of workers sign cards saying they want a union.
The NLRB is the federal agency that oversees and referees unionization efforts and collective bargaining in America’s private sector. Its general counsel serves essentially as a prosecutor who cracks down on labor law violations, for instance, on companies that fire workers for supporting a union or on unions that engage in illegal picketing.
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