New NLRB Intake Protocol Delays When Investigations Get Assigned

The National Labor Relations Board is using a new system to manage incoming unfair labor practice cases that requires unions and workers to clear procedural hurdles before their charges are assigned for investigation.

The influx of more than 600 ULP charges filed during the 43-day government shutdown last fall combined with the existing backlog, regular case intake, and staffing woes made the new process necessary, according to an internal memo detailing the policy reviewed by Bloomberg Law.

The NLRB has had to deal with the practical consequences of a range of government dysfunction during the second Trump administration, including an exodus of talent amid virtually no hiring, a leadership vacuum that hobbled the board for nearly a year, and the longest government closure in US history.

The new intake protocol for unfair labor practice charges incorporates some Biden-era changes intended to increase efficiency and moves them earlier in the process. These include requesting evidence and other information from charging parties, and screening charges for possible summary dismissal.

Instead of being assigned to a board agent for investigation, new charges are sent to an unassigned case list pending a charging party’s submission of supporting documents, such as a timeline of events and a list of witnesses. Failure to provide that information within two weeks can result in a charge being tossed for noncooperation.

A staffer in each regional office is designated as the “unassigned case list specialist” responsible for processing new charges, checking for required document submissions, and reviewing that information to determine whether the charges are valid or should be thrown out.

Charges that pass those initial tests get assigned when there’s a board agent available who can investigate them in a timely manner.

The internal memo on the new policy provides more specifics than the corresponding publicly available directive that then-acting General Counsel William Cowen issued last month. But it’s still vague about prioritizing unassigned cases and imposes a deadline for initial submissions that workers will have a difficult time meeting, said Michael Duff, a labor law professor at the Saint Louis University.

“In practice, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for charging parties to be concerned that their charges could be preempted before they can present evidence, or that their charges could get buried in an undifferentiated blob of cases,” said Duff, a former NLRB attorney.

Deciding Assignments

Despite the lack of specifics on unassigned case prioritization, there’s nothing in the memo that affirmatively cancels the NLRB’s long standing approach of placing more urgency on serious allegations, like terminations emerging from organizing campaigns, said Mori Rubin, a former NLRB regional director in Los Angeles.

“It’s wrong to assume the regions no longer prioritize cases based on impact,” Rubin said. “This memo doesn’t restrict a director from deciding which of the cases ready for assignment should be handled first.”

Case prioritization has been happening organically across the agency’s field offices for years, based partly on the demands of particular regions and individual supervisors, an NLRB field attorney who spoke on the condition of anonymity said.

Regional staffers overwhelmed by their workloads—which include representation cases and trials with hard deadlines—begged for a way to prevent new unfair labor practice cases from piling up on their dockets, the agency attorney said.

The NLRB didn’t respond to a request for comment on the new intake protocol.

Top Priorities

The intake policy contains an exception for two types of charges that are immediately assigned for investigation: those related to existing cases, and those that can give rise to requests for court orders against unions.

The National Labor Relations Act requires the agency to seek injunctions if certain charges have merit, including allegations of strikes or pickets intended to force an employer to recognize an uncertified union.

Those “statutory priority” charges are so urgent that regions are supposed to investigate them within 72 hours, according to the agency’s case-handling manual.

Such top-priority allegations are very rare. They accounted for 0.4% of the 18,000 unfair labor practice charges filed in 2025, according to a review of NLRB statistics.

Strange Timing

Cowen released his memo on the new procedure at an unusual time: after the Senate confirmed Crystal Carey as NLRB general counsel but before she was officially sworn in.

In Carey’s first publicly announced personnel move, she tapped Cowen to serve as the acting head of the Operations-Management Division, which oversees the NLRB’s 26 regional offices.

Cowen succeeds Joan Sullivan, who authored the internal memo on the new intake policy before she left the agency.

But naming Cowen as operations chief doesn’t necessarily mean Carey fully endorses the protocol introduced just before she took office, said Duff, the labor law professor.

“Maybe the GC winds up agreeing with everything, maybe not,” he said. “I’m always surprised by how little coordination there is.”