Donald Trump is widely expected to reverse some of the moves by the Biden administration that were blasted by the business community as government overreach. Now it looks as if the process is already starting for the restaurant industry.
The Senate recently shot down the nomination of Lauren McFerran for another five-year term as chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal body that regulates union organizing. Under McFerran’s leadership, the agency has made the organizing process far easier for labor while increasingly narrowing what restaurateurs and other employers can do to remain union-free. Restaurants, and Starbucks in particularly, have clearly felt the effects.
Recently, for instance, directors ruled that then-acting Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz illegally threatened an employee when he told her, “If you don’t like working at Starbucks, you can go work for another company.”
Under McFerran’s leadership, the board also greatly altered the organizing process. Previously, employees had to request permission from the NLRB for a vote on unionizing. Now a shop is assumed to be unionized if a majority of the workers so much as express a preference for union representation. A vote is held only if the employer seeks it as a way of keeping the union out. And if the NLRB decides the business is trying to nudge workers toward a "No" vote, it can scrap the election and recognize the union with a vote never being held.
The defeat of McFerran’s immediate re-appointment as NLRB chairman leaves the post open for Trump to fill immediately after he’s inaugurated in January. The strong expectation is that the incoming president will nominate an NLRB chairman who is less pro-labor and anti-employer.
The nomination of another director was also killed by the Senate. Had that director and McFerran succeeded in being approved for new terms, the current composition of the board would have been kept intact for at least another two years.
The attempted re-ups were choreographed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Democrat from New York. His effort was thwarted by the "No" votes of independent senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Both will leave the Senate at the end of the current term.
“The stakes were high and the business community got a huge win,” Franklin Coley, a partner in the Orlando political consultancy Align Public Strategies, said during this week’s Working Lunch government-affairs podcast. “It is going to be a new day for everyone at the NLRB.”
Coley co-hosts the Working Lunch podcast with his Align partner, Joe Kefauver. In addition to breaking down the implications of McFerran’s rejection by the Senate, this week’s episode also looks at what’s ahead legislatively for the restaurant industry at the state and local level, and why last week’s developments in Minneapolis should be warmly welcomed by anyone who fears a proliferation of worker-populated wage setting boards like California’s Fast Food Council.
Press Play for a preview of what’s ahead for the business in 2025.
The episode is the last broadcast of Working Lunch in 2024. The weekly restaurant-centric update on political and regulatory issues will resume the first week in January.
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