Labor Department chaos hides an anti-worker agenda

Earlier this year, the case of a Boston Trader Joe’s employee had his wrongful termination case dismissed by the National Labor Relations Board, with the board providing no explanation other than “a lack of cooperation.”

However, that is precisely the reason given under the board’s recent policy of rejecting cases that do not meet its new standards, which require those filing lawsuits to gather and present information previously collected by a board investigator. The board explained that this is part of a new phase of investigation to determine whether a case might be eligible for summary dismissal, at least under the new standard.

Under this policy, the accusing party – usually an employee or union alleging an unfair labor practice – is required to file a timeline of events related to its allegation, documents about those events, such as communications and telephone records, as well as a list of witnesses it plans to bring and a summary of their testimony. All of this was previously collected and presented by a commission investigator, but now workers must make their point of view even before a commission investigator is appointed. If workers fail to collect this information, they can expect the commission to reject their case.

While the Department of Labor cited “the existing backlog of cases and declining workforce” as the reason for the new policy, the change proved a boon for employers hoping to escape the board’s scrutiny and was hailed as a victory for employers by companies that help companies navigate labor disputes and NLRB charges.

Seth Goldstein, an attorney with Goldstein and Singla PLLC, which represents the Trader Joe’s worker, told Salon that although the layoff was reversed after sending a letter to the regional manager, he suspects many workers, especially those without legal counsel, would simply accept the decision.

“I can’t imagine how many layoffs have taken place, while people just accept this as the government’s last word,” Goldstein said.

The whole ordeal, however, is indicative of a department that has drawn attention for chaos at the leadership level, but is quietly attacking America’s conservative view of labor.

At the top, the Department of Labor appears to be in disarray. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the one-term Republican congresswoman from Oregon chosen by Trump to lead the department, has been mired in scandal since January. Chavez-DeRemer has faced allegations that she was romantically involved with a security personnel, allegations she has denied while Trump has expressed his continued support for her. Separately, Chavez-DeRemer’s husband, Shawn DeRemer, was accused of sexual assault by two women in the department and banned from its buildings. An attorney for DeRemer also denied the allegations against him.

The department’s inspector general, Anthony D’Esposito, a former congressman from Long Island, has expanded his office’s investigation into the allegations, and several top aides have already resigned.

Meanwhile, Trump appointees have called on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to target diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and Andrea Lucas, chair of the EEOC, called on white men to help “identify, attack and eliminate all forms of racial and gender discrimination – including against white male applicants and employees.”

At the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, data released by Senate Democrats shows the agency conducted 20% fewer inspections and issued 42% fewer fines in 2025.

At the NLRB, the board has gone nearly a year without a quorum, meaning the national board has been unable to issue decisions, leaving regional boards to sort through things while cases pile up at the national level.

Over the course of this year, there has been a significant decrease in new union activity across the country. A review of NLRB data by the Center for American Progress found that union elections overseen by the NLRB fell 30% year over year during Trump’s first year, with 42% fewer workers participating in those elections and the success rate of union elections falling below 70%.

An NLRB employee with knowledge of the situation there told Salon that the situation at the agency had been brewing for a decade and was made worse by Trump’s return to power last year.

The agency has seen its funding decline since 2011, as inflation erodes a largely stagnant budget. Trump also gutted the agency during his first term, and although former President Joe Biden’s administration made some hires, the agency still has fewer employees than it needs to handle its workload.

“You have more charges than people to investigate, and unless you force people to investigate, I don’t think we’ll be able to significantly reduce the backlog,” the NLRB agent said.

Over the past year, the agency has also seen a decline following billionaire Elon Musk’s “At a Crossroads” letter, offering workers an off-ramp and voluntary early retirement, further reducing the agency’s numbers. Combined with the hiring freeze, the agency saw about a sixth of its already overworked workforce leave.

As a result, the agency’s dysfunction has reached the point where it even poses a threat to employers who face charges before the agency. The agency has always aimed to schedule hearings within 100 days of filing a charge. However, between fiscal 2022 and 2025, this measure increased from 215 days to 495 days, according to a source familiar with the measures. In fiscal year 2010, the average was only 135 days.

This means that the potential liability of employers has increased significantly. In a wrongful termination case, for example, an employer might only have to pay 100 days of back pay if the case is resolved in the employee’s favor beforehand. Now they may have to pay more than a year’s salary.

It’s easy to miss all of this in the main data coming from the agency, given that regional offices continue to close cases, largely in line with recent years. A report from the Brookings Institution and the Economic Policy Institute last year found that in 2025, cases closed were largely in line with those in 2023 and 2024, as were the number of new petitions filed with the agency.

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Margaret Poydock, co-author of the report, said the fact that the first half of 2025 looked like previous years speaks more to long-term dysfunction within the agency rather than any sort of business-as-usual approach from the current administration.

“Even under the Biden administration, the NLRB had difficulty simply obtaining funding to have adequate staffing to meet the increased interest in worker organizing that was occurring under the administration,” Poydock said.

Aurelia Glass, one of the Center for American Progress analysts who co-wrote the analysis on the union elections, said the current collapse at the Labor Department is part of a broader Trump administration agenda: targeting workers’ right and ability to organize.

“I think what’s really important is seeing that this is part of a broader set of Trump administration policies attacking unions — really attacking the right to organize,” Glass told Salon. “Leaving the board without a quorum for almost a year is significant. But beyond that, there are also attacks on the federal right to organize, such as taking away the bargaining rights of more than a million federal workers. There have been many types of attacks by the administration on union organizing, and I think it’s clear that this is a broader pattern of anti-union behavior by the administration.”

The NLRB did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Salon.

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