CWA Statement on NLRB Funding Amid Increase in Worker Organizing

WASHINGTON – The Communications Workers of America released the following statement in response to the NLRB’s announcement that worker organizing has doubled in the past three years:

Today’s National Labor Relations Board release of data on worker union election petitions confirmed that the increase in worker organizing that our union has seen since the start of the Biden-Harris administration is part of a national movement, reversing a decades-long decline. Workers across our country are coming together to exercise their rights at work and organize for a better future. President Biden and Vice President Harris have made it clear that union representation helps build a better future and workers have responded.

But the chronic underfunding of the NLRB has left workers with inadequate protections in their fight to build the American middle class. Despite the thousands of union elections in the past year, the NLRB has just half of the staffing in field offices as it did 20 years ago. This short staffing leads to justice delayed and justice denied for working people. CWA members at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette waited five years and one day from filing unfair labor practice charges against their employer until the day an overburdened and underfunded NLRB filed an injunction against the Post-Gazette to enforce the law. While waiting for justice, CWA members bravely sacrificed to carry on the fight on their own, leveraging the power of the strike and maintaining their picket lines for two years and counting. Every American worker deserves swift justice that can only be served by a fully funded and staffed NLRB.

Our union applauds the Biden-Harris administration’s pro-worker policies that have empowered workers to stand up for their rights. More work remains to be done. We call on Congress to fully fund the NLRB and pass the PRO Act immediately.

###