NLRB Legal Chief Plans Back-to-Future Strategy on Board Powers

The National Labor Relations Board’s new general counsel will reach back into history in an attempt to unleash the agency’s power to help organized labor overcome unlawful employer resistance to unions.

General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo’s goals include potentially reviving the NLRB’s authority to order an employer to recognize and bargain with a union based on signed cards expressing majority worker support rather than an election, according to a memo the agency issued this month. The board stopped using that type of order in the late 1960s.

Abruzzo also indicated her interest in activating the NLRB’s ability to force an employer ...