Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, HOUSE NEWS—HELP subcommittee hearing details role of NLRB in worker protection, (Jun 13, 2025)

By Patricia K. Ruiz, J.D.

The hearing focused on House Republicans’ disagreements with the NLRB under the Biden-Harris administration.

In a hearing entitled, “Restoring Balance: Ensuring Fairness and Transparency at the NLRB,” the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions examined the role of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in protecting workers. Witnesses argued that the NLRB under the Biden-Harris administration “was less interested in debate and democracy than it was in seeing that unions were entrenched in every workplace,” according to a Committee on Education & Workforce blog post.

Allen opening statement. Subcommittee Chairman Rick Allen (R-GA) argued that the previous administration used the NLRB to expand its own authority, saying, “The Biden-Harris Board spent four years engaging in government overreach to expand unions and their control over American workers. The Biden-Harris Board defined graduate students and student-athletes as employees, simply so these groups can unionize.” Allen took issue with the administration’s “gutting [of the] democratic process by which unions become the exclusive representative of employees,” implementing the card check process in lieu of secret ballot elections. Allen expressed disagreement with the NLRB’s adoption of a flexible standard to determine whether a worker is an employee covered by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) or an independent contractor, as well as a final rule by the NLRB establishing a broader standard for examining the existence of a joint-employer relationship as an alternative to the franchise model. King also called the prohibition of so-called “captive audience” meetings a clear violation of the free speech provision of the NLRA.

Testimony. Roger King, senior labor and employment counsel at the HR Policy Association called prohibition on captive audience meetings “an unlawful content-based violation of the First Amendment,” arguing that “the breadth of the decision is such that it restricts or interferes with employers’ ability to discuss fundamental workplace issues with their employees in general, regardless of whether the meeting agenda or ensuing discussion might touch upon unionization issues.” Institute for the American Worker President F. Vincent Vernuccio described card check elections “absolutely inferior to a secret ballot election, [which gives] workers the opportunity to have a private vote where they can reflect on unionization, where there is not intimidation, where there is not coercion, and make that choice.”

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) highlighted the economic success and worker freedom seen in right-to-work states, arguing that right to work drives job creation. Additionally, Rep. Bob Onder (R-MO) emphasized the need for the Worker Enfranchisement Act, which would require the participation of a two-thirds quorum of eligible employees in unionization elections. Finally, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) took issue with the Biden-Harris administration’s rule of allowing certain types of unfair labor practice charges to block NLRB-scheduled elections.

Abruzzo’s testimony. However, Jennifer Abruzzo, former General Counsel at the NLRB, presented a very different outlook in her testimony, noting that “As written and intended, the NLRA is a pro-worker statute, not a pro-employer or a pro-union one.

She explained:

“For me, restoring balance and ensuring fairness and transparency means that the NLRB must hold true to the policy of the United States to encourage collective bargaining by protecting workers’ full freedom of association. We all know that the power dynamics at workplaces are skewed in favor of employers. In enacting the NLRA, Congress sought to address that power imbalance by trying to level the playing field so that employees could act together and effectively negotiate with their employers to improve their conditions at work without fear of retaliation.”

Abruzzo also noted the lack of a quorum at the NLRB (based on her own and Board Member’s Gwynne Wilcox’s removal) and the impact of current NLRB “dysfunction.” She stated:

“And, who is benefitting from this dysfunction? Not workers, but employers, who may feel emboldened to violate the law with impunity and retaliate against their workers, who are unionizing or otherwise acting together to make their work lives better, because there is no functioning Board to hold them accountable for lawbreaking activity. So, at the same time that billionaires and corporations are pushing for more tax cuts at the expense of working families, they are trying to silence their workers. This is a travesty.”

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