President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks on the administration’s tariff plans at a ‘Make America Healthy Again’ event, Wednesday, April 2, 2025, in the White House Rose Garden. (Official White House photo by Abe McNatt)

The Biden-era board turned labor law into a political weapon. It’s time to rebuild a system that serves the American people, not partisan interests.

For much of the 20th and early 21st centuries, many American workers have benefited from strong, honest unions that focus on safety, skills, and fair pay. These kinds of unions deliver real value to workers: improving conditions, building careers, and strengthening the industries that keep America moving. Their ability to do so was the result of a structure that allowed for relatively fair bargaining and negotiations between American workers and employers.

Nearly a century ago, amidst widespread labor unrest and citing the disruptive effect on commerce from conflicts between employers and workers, Congress created the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and tasked it with upholding fairness in the workplace and protecting the rights of both employees and employers while enforcing federal labor law. After some initial twists and turns, the NLRB interpreted the law in a manner that generally protected the balance between American workers and employers.

But under the Biden administration, that mission was corrupted. The NLRB became a political tool for politically partisan unions and their leadership and, effectively, a fundraising arm of the Democratic Party, instead of serving the interests of American workers. The ideologues in the Biden administration believed that the advancement of their political objectives justified nearly any actions by union leadership, even when it harmed American workers.

They were more interested in shaping elections, advancing radical ideology, and opening our borders than actually improving workplaces. Certain union leaders decided that their members’ political opinions didn’t matter, advanced the idea that men could be women and women could be men, and sold out their members by supporting the mass importation of millions of illegal aliens into the United States. To be clear: Not all unions did this, but the Biden administration decided that the political benefit from allowing them to do so justified massive changes in employer-worker relations.

Through sweeping administrative rewrites and unprecedented procedural maneuvers, Biden’s NLRB transformed what should be an impartial agency into an activist body advancing the interests of its political allies. It abandoned decades of precedent, sometimes overturning more than 50-75 years of settled law, to tilt the balance of power toward union leadership and away from individual workers.

Earlier this year, President Trump rightfully removed partisan activist members who had turned the NLRB into a tool of the Democratic Party, rather than a neutral arbiter, creating an opportunity to rebuild a board grounded in the law and fairness.

With the Senate’s long-awaited vote to confirm the president’s nominees last week, we can now have a full and functional NLRB led by Americans who will apply the law as written, not as politically convenient. These members restore balance and return the agency to its core mission: fair labor practices and the protection of workers’ right to organize or not.

Pairing a functional NLRB with congressional reforms will repair the damage and put workers back at the center of labor policy.

Chair Bill Cassidy and the Senate HELP Committee deserve real credit for unveiling a pro-worker reform package that restores secret ballot elections, rolls back the NLRB’s Cemex policy that enables union recognition without a private vote, protects workers’ and employers’ ability to share information, and re-centers due process and the rule of law. It’s the right blueprint to put workers, not political insiders, back in charge. Policy should reward unions that strengthen paychecks and safety, not political machines that exploit workers.

The Biden-era NLRB’s bias wasn’t limited to a single decision. It attempted to rewrite the law to favor partisan unions. In case after case, the NLRB used regulatory fiat to undermine worker choice, silence employers, and consolidate political power. Chief among its moves was the Cemex ruling, which effectively replaced long-standing secret-ballot elections for card checks, exposing employees to pressure and eroding a core safeguard recognized for decades by courts and Congress.

The same “we know what’s best for you” mindset drove changes to captive-audience restrictions, which sought to limit employers’ ability to hold voluntary meetings to discuss unionization. And, it allowed unions to stall decertification elections simply by filing complaints. None of these shifts came from Congress; they were made by unelected officials and benefited politically aligned unions like the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). These are unions that do not care about fighting for American workers: They are political operations that use worker dues to advance radical agendas and open borders.

The National Labor Relations Act was never intended to empower union leadership at the expense of workers. Yet under the Biden administration, that’s precisely what it became.

President Trump’s nominees to the NLRB represent a chance to change that: to restore accountability, fairness, and balance. They understand the difference between unions that serve their members and unions that serve their party. Their confirmations last week ensure that the board again applies the law as written, not as politically convenient.

The Senate made a clear choice: restore fairness, balance, and the rule of law. The Biden administration treated the NLRB as a political tool, rewriting rules, rewarding donors, and silencing dissent – all at the expense of the very workers they claim to champion. This ends now. American workers deserve unions that earn trust through service, not politics, and an NLRB that protects their rights, not partisan interests.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.