Biden's White House has tried to boost unions. The election could change that.

Joe Biden’s presidency has seen a flurry of labor actions from Detroit to Hollywood. What comes next could hinge on who gets to oversee labor relations after the election.

The National Labor Relations Board — which polices unfair labor practices and mediates worker-management disputes — has become an aggressive union booster under Biden. While the agency’s policies typically shift depending on who’s in the White House, the change has been pronounced, labor experts and former NLRB staffers say.

“You’d have to go back to the 1930s and early 1940s to see something of this nature,” said Michael LeRoy, a professor at the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

But the NLRB’s recent efforts haven’t always succeeded, and emerging court battles will affect whether its more muscular approach — whether on behalf of workers or employers — can continue, as former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris vie for union votes.

“The confluence of a strongly pro-labor NLRB and a strongly anti-labor Supreme Court are sort of mixing together to create this atmosphere of instability,” LeRoy said.

A pro-labor push

“Biden has been pretty forward with his thought that he wants to be the most pro-union president in history, and I think that actually has kind of taken place,” said Joel White lawyer who advises employers in labor matters at Fox Rothschild.

Before joining the law firm in 2022, White worked for a decade at a regional NLRB field office under the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. The agency’s current approach, he said, marked “the biggest swing thus far.”

You’d have to go back to the 1930s and early 1940s to see something of this nature.

Michael LeRoy, University of