In the early days of the American labor movement, company bosses, alarmed at a surge of employees demanding higher wages and safer working conditions, cooked up a plan to hamstring their opposition. To create a false sense of worker empowerment, corporations set up so-called company unions dominated by management types, providing workers with relatively cheap concessions — like pool halls, recreation centers and free or discounted company products — while guaranteeing that any real decisions over pay and benefits remained in corporate hands.
That ended in 1935, when Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and banned company unions. All labor organizations would now have to be freely elected by the workforce, without interference from above. Since then, American unions have successfully fought for 40-hour workweeks, the end of most child labor and other protections that are now enshrined in law. The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans shrunk considerably in the years after the NLRA passed, before growing once more as unionization declined in the 1970s and 1980s.
While labor advocates seek to revitalize union membership and pressure governments to pass labor-friendly policies as a means to increase workers' bargaining strength, Republicans hoping to regain full control of government in 2024 have plans to "fix" the labor movement by targeting those unions, which they characterize as unaccountable and inefficient. Former President Donald Trump's first administration took measures that labor experts say are tantamount to union-busting, while Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill introduced the Teamwork for Employees and Managers (TEAM) Act in 2022, which would repeal NLRA's Section 8(a)(2) and other rules meant to keep unions independent and capable of bargaining effectively. Section 8(a)(2), which lays out what constitutes unfair labor practice on both ends, expressly prohibits unions that have been "assisted or controlled" by the employer.
That companies would suddenly act in good faith after being given even more power is a far-fetched proposition, Ellen Dichner, a former NLRB chief counsel during Barack Obama's presidency, said in an interview.
"The idea that a committee formed by the employer is going to respond in any meaningful way to the concerns of workers, especially if those concerns impact wages, hours and working conditions, is not based on reality," she told Salon. "Workers have no guaranteed meaningful voice in these committees."
Although the TEAM Act did not become law, Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's right-wing policy template with fingerprints from over 140 former Trump administration officials, calls for the bill's revival in the next Congress. According to the text of Project 2025, permitting "formal worker–management cooperative organizations," and allowing petitions that decertify a union and trigger a fresh election to be filed at any time, would provide workers with greater choice over how they are represented.
Alexander T. MacDonald, a labor and employment attorney who has spoken favorably about employer-worker unions, argued Republicans are just responding to a lack of enthusiasm for organized labor.
"Labor representation in this country right now is at 6% of the private sector workforce, which suggests to me that something's going wrong with the labor movement," he said. "People are not choosing unions, for whatever reason. And one reason might be that there's been not been a whole lot of incentive on the part of incumbent unions to improve their services."
But many union representatives and labor relations experts argue that lower unionization is a product of Republican policies designed to hamper organized labor, such as "right to work" laws that allow workers to reap the benefits of collective bargaining without paying dues. They maintain that, whatever the rhetoric around company-led unions, Republicans are simply seeking to give bosses more power over workers.
"It's designed to eliminate unions as an independent and free entity that deals with employers, that sits across the table from them, and bargains with them," AFL-CIO advocacy director Jody Calemine told Salon, emphasizing the need for a binding contract that a union can enforce. "If you don't have binding contracts, if you don't have an independent voice, then essentially the company controls how any of these discussions will play out."
GOP proposals to encourage management-worker cooperation operate on the assumption that both parties are capable of working harmoniously to reach common goals. Such an assumption seems far-fetched, when companies like Starbucks, Amazon and SpaceX, as well as institutions like the University of California system, routinely engage in legally dubious tactics designed to manipulate or scare workers away from unions, including firing pro-union employees, conducting surveillance, spreading misinformation and pitting members against each other. After the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a federal agency that enforces labor law, ruled against several of those companies for violating federal statutes, some of them filed lawsuits aimed at having the NLRB declared unconstitutional. Federal courts have already ruled in favor of those companies in a number of cases and limited the NLRB's sway in the process.
The illusion of power in company-run committees, Calemine added, would be used to persuade workers that "they don't need an independent unit, they don't need this union that's coming in trying to organize, since they already have a voice or whatever you want to call it in this TEAM Act committee meeting."
Collective action by unions has been the primary, and perhaps only recourse for workers to bargain for their rights; the existence of "cooperative" groups where company leaders have partial control would allow them to bypass traditional unions on bargaining issues and split workers by favoring some groups over others. The adversarial model of post-1935 management-worker relations that the GOP wants to reverse is based on the principle that the objectives of employers and union members are fundamentally in conflict—union members want higher salaries and improved benefits, while corporations have mandates to pursue maximum profit.
"This change would be asking corporations to voluntarily accept a different mandate or balancing a mandate of maximizing profit with cooperating with workers," said Stephanie Luce, the Chair of the Department of Labor Studies at the City University of New York. "I don't want to say that labor management cooperation could never happen. But it's pretty far fetched. And it has to be under the kind of ideal scenarios in which the management has a very explicit commitment to cooperation and has set up some guardrails to make that possible."
Current NLRB rules do permit some company-run employee participation programs, as long as they do not touch issues related to work conditions or other bargaining subjects covered by the NLRA. Other purposes, like brainstorming or facilitating employer-employee communication, are allowed. Proponents of the TEAM Act, claiming that their bill would protect those already-protected programs, saw their efforts to pass the bill thwarted by a presidential veto in 1995 and opposition by the Senate's Democratic majority in 2022.
The TEAM Act may breathe yet if the GOP gains full control of the federal government in the 2024 elections. But even without the cooperation of Congress, the Trump administration was able to enact policies that stalled union elections and gave company management more time to campaign against union recognition; restricted workers' ability to picket their subcontractors; and made it easier for employers to fire workers for speaking up for better pay and working conditions. The Biden administration subsequently reversed most of those rules.
Trump's record on labor during his first term is a sign that any promises he and his allies make are not to be trusted, Elena Lopez, a senior legislative specialist at the Communications Workers of America, said in an interview.
"It's all fantasy," Lopez said. "If you look at what their proposals actually say in detail, it's all about empowering the company."
Project 2025 also proposes to make it far easier and quicker to decertify a union by repealing the contract bar rule, which currently blocks employees from filing a decertification petition for a three-year period after after a bargaining agreement has taken effect. After that period has elapsed, employees typically have a 45-day window to file a petition before the union signs another three-year contract. Proponents of repeal say that this process is a woefully inadequate mechanism to holding unions accountable.
"There's this famous saying that antitrust law is supposed to be good for competition, but not for competitors. You can imagine why incoming unions wouldn't like this. You gotta work harder, right?" said MacDonald, the employment attorney who has been critical of unions in their current form. "And ultimately, that can lead to more or better services, that's more representation and more people choosing what suits them best."
Supporters of keeping the contract bar rule say that it's rich for writers of Project 2025 to preach about workers' autonomy when they're also trying to legalize company unions. The real point, according to Harvard Law School professor Benjamin Sachs, is to "destabilize labor relations" under the guise of employee choice.
"You don't protect dissenting voices by giving people the right to call an election any day. That would be like saying, if a president is elected on day one, we can have another election on day two, and a third election on day three," Sachs said. "Elections last for a certain period of time, and then we can have another election. That's a logical rule that gives unions and management the chance to bargain workable collective agreements. It gives workers the chance to make a choice and have their choice respected for a reasonable period of time, and then if workers want to revisit that choice, they have an option to do so at the end of the contract."
If a union is decertified, the contract they negotiated with management would no longer be in effect. And following the divide and conquer playbook of company unions, management could try to make sure this happens as much as possible. "Employers could easily approach a few dissatisfied employees and promise some benefits in return for starting a decertification process," said Luce.
Trump has sought to convert union members, a traditionally Democratic constituency, to his side by claiming to support workers and railing against immigration and trade policies that he says are depriving them of jobs. But even if Republicans celebrate favorable signs, like Teamsters Union president Sean O'Brien praising Trump at the Republican National Convention, union leaders are working to convince rank-and-file members that Trump and Vance are nothing but false prophets who will ruin them all.
"We're showing our members that the conservative promise, as they call it, is really about empowering companies and employers over the everyday needs of working people," Lopez said.
