Labor Department chaos hides an anti-worker agenda

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

This, however, was just the reason given as part of the board’s recent policy of dismissing cases that fall short of their new standard, which requires those bringing cases to gather and present information that was previously gathered by a board investigator. The board explained this is part of a new phase of investigation meant to determine whether a case might be eligible for summary dismissal, at least under the new standard.

Under the policy, the charging party — typically an employee or union alleging an unfair labor practice — is required to file a timeline of events related to their allegation, documentation of those events, like communications and phone records, and a list of witnesses they plan to bring and a summary of their testimony. All of this was previously collected and presented by a board investigator, but now workers must make their case before a board investigator is even assigned. If workers fail to collect this information, they can expect the board to dismiss their case.

While the Department of Labor cited “the existing backlog of cases and decreasing staffing levels” as the reason for the new policy, the change came as a windfall for employers hoping to escape the scrutiny of the board and was hailed as a win for employers by firms that help businesses navigate labor disputes and NLRB charges.

Seth Goldstein, an attorney at Goldstein and Singla PLLC, which is representing the Trader Joe’s worker, told Salon that although the dismissal was reversed after he sent a letter to the regional director, he suspects many workers, especially those without legal counsel, would simply accept the decision.

“I can’t imagine how many dismissals that have occurred, where people just accept it as the final word by the government,” Goldstein said.

The whole ordeal, however, is indicative of a department that has garnered attention for the chaos at the leadership level, but which is quietly plugging away at the conservative vision for labor in the United States.

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

The department’s inspector general, Anthony D’Esposito, a former Long Island congressman, has been expanding his office’s probe into the allegations and already multiple top aides have stepped down.

Meanwhile, Trump appointees have directed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to target diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and Andrea Lucas, the chair of the EEOC, has called on white men for help in “identifying, attacking and eliminating all forms of race and sex discrimination — including against white male applicants and employees.”

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

At the NLRB, the board spent nearly a year without a quorum, meaning the national board was unable to issue rulings, which left regional boards to sort out what they could while cases pile up at the national level.

Over that year, there was a significant decrease in new union activity across the country. One Center for American Progress review of NLRB data found that NLRB-overseen union elections fell by 30% year over year in Trump’s first year, with 42% fewer workers participating in those elections and the success rate of union elections sliding to below 70%.

One worker at the NLRB with knowledge of the situation there told Salon the situation at the agency as something that has been simmering for a decade and made worse by Trump’s return to office last year.

The agency has seen a decrease in funding since 2011, with inflation chipping away at a largely stagnant budget. Trump also hollowed out the agency in his first term, and though former President Joe Biden’s administration did some hiring, the agency still has fewer employees than it needs to handle its caseload.

“You have more charges than you do people to investigate them, and unless you get the people to investigate them, I don’t think we’re going to be able to make a significant dent in the backlog,” the NLRB worker said.

In the past year, the agency has also experienced attrition from billionaire Elon Musk’s “Fork in the Road” letter, giving workers an exit ramp and a voluntary early retirement, further chipping away at the agency’s numbers. Combined with the hiring freeze, the agency has seen about a sixth of its already overstretched workforce leave.

As a result, dysfunction at the agency has reached the point where it even poses a threat to employers with charges against them before the agency. The agency has historically aimed to have hearings scheduled within 100 days of a charge being brought. Between fiscal year 2022 and 2025, however, that metric ballooned from 215 days to 495 days, according to a source familiar with the metrics. In fiscal year 2010, the average was just 135 days.

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

All of this is easy to miss in the topline data coming out of the agency given that regional offices are still closing cases, largely in line with recent years. A Brookings Institution and Economic Policy Institute report from last year found that in 2025, case closures were largely in line with 2023 and 2024, as was the number of new petitions filed with the agency.

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Margaret Poydock, a co-author of the report, explained that the fact that the first half of 2025 looked similar to recent years speaks more to the long-term dysfunction at the agency rather than some sort of business-as-usual approach from the current administration.

“Even under the Biden administration, the NLRB grappled with just getting funding to have adequate staffing to accommodate the increased interest in worker organizing that was happening under the administration,” Poydock said.

Aurelia Glass, one of the analysts at the Center for American Progress who coauthored the analysis on union elections, said that the current breakdown at the Department of Labor is part of a larger agenda from the Trump administration: targeting the right and ability of workers to organize.

“I think what’s really important is to see that this is part of a larger set of policies from the Trump administration attacking unions — really attacking the right to organize,”  Glass told Salon. “Leaving the board without a quorum for almost a year is significant. But in addition to that, you also have attacks on the federal right to organize, like removing bargaining rights for over a million federal workers. There’s been a lot of different kinds of attacks from the administration on organizing, and I think it’s clear that this is a larger pattern of anti-union behavior coming from the administration.”

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

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