From an article titled ‘Unions brace for pro-business shift in labor policy under Trump’ by Reuters:
Unions in the United States face sweeping changes to labor law and regulations under a new Republican administration that is expected to tilt policy toward employers.Trump’s victory means a conservative Supreme Court and Republicans controlling Congress, the NLRB, and agencies that govern union and workers’ rights.
Republicans will take control of the presidency and both chambers of Congress in Tuesday’s elections, after unions failed to deliver key industrial states to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Clinton’s loss could have wide-ranging consequences for unions. Donald Trump and a Republican-led Senate will likely pick the next justice for the Supreme Court, which often hears labor-related cases.
Republican nominees will control the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) … and Republicans will control federal agencies that govern the formation of unions, overtime rules and more.
Trump has expressed support for so-called right-to-work legislation, which allows workers to avoid paying union dues. Republican leaders in Congress have consistently sought such a change at the national level. Labor unions say such laws are aimed at undermining collective bargaining and workers’ rights.
William Gould, chair of the NLRB under Democratic President Bill Clinton and now a professor at Stanford Law School, said on Wednesday that Trump was likely to partner with Congress in dismantling a host of administration labor initiatives from Obama.
Republicans “regard unions as first amongst fair game” because of their support for Clinton, he said.
Steven Bernstein, a partner at law firm Fisher Phillips, which represents employers, said the Trump administration and Congress may also target recent NLRB rulings that allowed workers to picket on private property, expanded the type of worker activity protected by federal labor law and gave graduate students the right to unionize.
“It’s also fair to assume that Trump will be inclined to repeal a host of executive orders supporting unions,” particularly rules that apply to federal contracts, Bernstein said in a statement.
