Disciplined deregulation requires the sort of patience and intelligence that, happily, is in short supply within the Trump administration. Even White House budget chief Russell “Project 2025” Vought can’t summon it.
I can’t find a comparable tracker for quasi-judicial rulings at independent agencies, but the business lobby lost a couple of big ones this month at the NLRB. Both cases were about union-busting at Amazon, whose chairman, Jeff Bezos, kisses Trump’s ass so relentlessly that even Trump finds it a bit much. These NLRB rulings might have gone in Amazon’s favor had Trump not fired NLRB Chair Gwynne Wilcox (in violation of a 1935 Supreme Court ruling that the current high court is expected any day now to overturn) and then delayed giving the NLRB a quorum until this past December.
The board didn’t elaborate on why it rejected Amazon’s First Amendment argument, but one likely reason was that the board felt it lacked sufficient Republican members to overturn a Biden precedent. The NLRB did finally acquire a quorum in December, along with a Republican majority, with two Republicans and one Democrat. But the board has declined to overturn any precedents with fewer than three votes, and that would require one more Republican member. This is longstanding practice at the NLRB, not required by any law or regulation. It’s the kind of genteel tradition that one would expect a Trump appointee to flush down the toilet. But the current NLRB chair, James Murphy, worked as a staff aide at the NLRB more than 40 years, and the tradition matters to him; he recommitted to honoring it earlier this month at a House hearing.
The second NLRB ruling against Amazon’s union-busting, handed down by a regional administrative law judge rather than by the Washington-based board, occurred earlier this week. The case was about Amazon’s refusal to bargain over a union contract with warehouse workers in San Francisco who voted, way back in October 2024, to affiliate with the Teamsters. This refusal violates a Biden-era ruling by the full board that said after a successful “card check” (in which a majority of workers sign union authorization cards) management must immediately start negotiating a contract or request a more formal NLRB-supervised union election. Amazon did neither. Once again, Amazon asked the NLRB judge to reverse a Biden precedent, arguing in this instance that it was at odds with a Supreme Court precedent. Amazon lawyers had to know that the administrative law judge, or ALJ, lacked any power to overturn NLRB precedent, so it can hardly be surprised that it lost.
Amazon’s intended audience was never the ALJ, but rather the Washington-based board, or, failing that, an appellate judge. It seems likely that the Republican board will be willing to overturn the offending precedent if Macy is confirmed. I doubt the Democrats will try to postpone or kill Macy’s nomination, but that would be one way to prevent Amazon from winning this one. Too bad it isn’t up to the House, which has already demonstrated its willingness to compel management to negotiate union contracts. The pro-union Republican virus, alas, has not crossed over to the Senate side.
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