The lawyer who could deliver on Biden's wish to be the most pro-union president
The lawyer who could deliver on Biden’s wish to be the most pro-union president
Biden’s general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, Jennifer Abruzzo, is wielding her power in new ways
By Lauren Kaori Gurley
October 15, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/15/jennifer-abruzzo-union-biden-nlrb/?utm_source=reddit.com
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Starbucks was forced to rehire baristas after firing them during a union drive at a store in Memphis. Las Vegas laundry service Apex Linen was forced to rehire workers it laid off involved in union organizing. And Amazon may soon be forced to rehire a warehouse worker it fired in Staten Island who co-led the first successful union campaign at the company in U.S. history.
The lawyer who helped these workers get their jobs back this past year is Jennifer Abruzzo, 58, general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board, the agency tasked with protecting workers’ rights to organize in the United States.
Abruzzo has worked at the NLRB for nearly a quarter-century. But now, as the agency’s leader and chief enforcer of federal labor laws, she wants to make it far easier for workers to unionize than it has been in decades. Her tenure comes at a pivotal moment for unions. Union membership has fallen over the past four decades, but pandemic-era pressures that prompted millions of workers to retire or leave the workforce have also afforded workers new leverage to demand more from their employers. Union elections increased by 53 percent in fiscal year 2022 over 2021.
In a little over a year on the job, the President Biden appointee has become a household name throughout organized labor for reshaping the agency in new ways. In memos, she’s directed roughly 500 staff attorneys to invoke a rarely used legal tool to help union supporters return to work after retaliatory firings. She’s directed them to impose harsher penalties on employers who violate labor law and dusted off a decades-old legal doctrine that could halt employers’ anti-union campaigns.
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