2025 NLRB Predictions

By Timothy Murphy - Skoler Abbott P.C.

January 8, 2025

2025 will almost certainly be a busy year at the NLRB as Trump 2.0 re-sets the NLRB’s course in a more business-friendly direction. This is welcome news for employers, even though this trend of federal labor policy abruptly shifting with changes in the prevailing political winds is generally bad for employers and unions.

Writing, more generally, in his recent book American Covenant, Yuval Levin wrote:

“Today, just as the framers feared, a change of the party in power means a sudden change of direction in many policy domains, as a new president begins his term by undoing his predecessor’s key action. This renders our politics more divided and heated and puts power in the hands of the partisan activist fringe of the president’s party’…”

Both parties do this, but it’s no way to run a railroad. It seems like lawyers and lobbyists and activists are the only beneficiaries of the pendulum-style approach to governing in Washington, D.C.

Now I’ll get off my soapbox and make a few predictions:

1.  President Trump will fire General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo on January 20. As an unabashed advocate for expanding unionization, Ms. Abruzzo has drawn the ire of business groups, like no one else. President Biden fired General Counsel Peter Robb, a Trump appointee, on January 20, 2021 in what was then an unprecedented move. The legal challenge over it was unsuccessful. So, I’d be shocked if Ms. Abruzzo was still General Counsel at sunset on January 20, 2025.
2.  Republicans will be in the majority on the NLRB by August 1, 2025, which is much sooner than typical, due to the Democratic-controlled Senate’s failure to approve a new term for then Democratic Chair Lauren McFerrin last month.
3.  The Republican Board majority will – by December 31, 2025 – either have completed the process of reversing the Biden Board’s joint employment doctrine or taken concrete steps to do so. Returning to the more business-friendly joint employment doctrine of the first Trump Board will be a top priority for the second Trump Board.
4.  The NLRB will still be open for business at the end of 2025 as legal challenges to the constitutionality of the structure of NLRB fail to gain traction as they wind through our federal courts. Unhappy litigants at the NLRB have seized on some recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions (unrelated to the NLRB) to argue that the set up of the NLRB violates our federal constitution. I predict that those challenges to Board decisions on that basis won’t succeed.

Buckle your seats and stay tuned as 2025 should be an interesting ride.

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