Workers want unions, but the second Trump administration spent its first year in office putting up more obstacles for private sector workers trying to organize. In 2025, the administration attacked the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), fired pro-worker leaders at key federal agencies and replaced them with management-side lawyers, and left the decisional board without a quorum for 345 days.
New Center for American Progress analysis of data on union election cases certified by the NLRB finds that:
- The total number of NLRB-overseen union elections fell to 1,498 in 2025, a 30 percent decrease. After election totals reached a 10-year high of 2,124 in 2024, they returned to a level similar to that seen during President Donald Trump’s first term.
- 59,000 fewer workers participated in NLRB-overseen union elections in 2025, a decline of 42 percent from 2024.
- A new union’s likelihood of winning its election fell in 2025 to just below 70 percent.
Unions are reaching record levels of public support, millions of workers want to join unions, and in spite of administrative obstacles, workers are organizing in a variety of ways. For several years, energetic organizing activity—coupled with pro-union policies from the Biden administration—enabled workers to notch impressive wins building new unions even in historically difficult-to-organize jobs such as baristas at Starbucks.
These workers had to overcome major hurdles to form new unions successfully, as America’s labor law stacks the deck in favor of union-busting corporations. Businesses can use a range of legal tactics to persuade workers to vote against unionizing and can even resort to unlawfully firing workers who try to organize their colleagues, since monetary penalties for breaking the law are nonexistent. Corporations are served by a cottage industry of professional “union avoidance” consultants and law firms that charge top dollar.
Despite Trump’s promises on the campaign trail to be “a champion for the American worker,” the administration spent 2025 attacking the agency that oversees most private sector union organizing elections. Trump replaced NLRB leadership with former management-side lawyers—and before that, shortly after taking office in January, effectively shut down the operations of its five-member decisional board for almost a year by firing one of its members. The firing left the board without a quorum, meaning cases about illegal firings of union organizers and other unfair labor practices were stalled because decisions made by administrative law judges could be appealed and sent to the board, where they had to wait until a quorum was once again reached to receive a final decision.
Workers are still organizing, and they have other means of winning unions outside of the NLRB-overseen elections process, such as when corporations choose to voluntarily recognize that a majority of workers want to join a union as well as in the public sector, where the NLRB does not have jurisdiction. Further, Trump’s attacks could prompt workers to join unions as a means of protection. Indeed, preliminary estimates of 2025 union membership levels do not point to a decrease in overall union membership. Still, these anti-union moves place additional barriers in the way of workers trying to form new private sector unions. It remains an open question whether workers can overcome these obstacles going forward.
What is the NLRB?
The NLRB is an independent agency that oversees private sector labor relations. It conducts elections, adjudicates cases involving alleged labor law violations, and issues regulations. The agency was created under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which declared it to be the policy of the United States to “encourag[e] the practice and procedure of collective bargaining.”
Weaknesses in current law limit the NLRB’s ability to protect worker organizing—and thus labor law must be reformed through policies such as the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. Yet the agency still plays a critical role in ensuring that workers have a fair shot at organizing. NLRB rulings govern important aspects of organizing campaigns, such as where and how workers select a union; how, where, and when they can discuss union matters or workplace conditions with colleagues; and whether certain corporate actions to undermine organizing campaigns or union actions constitute unfair labor practices. For example, when an employer breaks the law while workers are trying to organize a union—and employers are charged with violating federal labor law in 41.5 percent of union election campaigns—the NLRB investigates and can issue orders to stop lawbreaking, such as ordering illegally fired workers to be reinstated. The NLRB’s adjudicatory powers can have substantial impacts on an organizing drive’s chance of success.
Yet although the NLRB is charged with overseeing nearly all private sector elections in the United States, new unionization increasingly occurs through alternative means. Today, nearly half of union members are government employees, who are covered by separate bargaining oversight systems at the federal and state and local levels. Moreover, private sector workers are increasingly forming unions through voluntary recognition agreements with firms, meaning employers forgo the election process in favor of recognizing unions after a majority of workers sign membership cards.
The NLRB certified fewer union election cases in 2025
2025 saw declines in both the number of elections held by the NLRB to organize new unions and the number of workers voting in these NLRB-overseen elections. A new union’s chances of winning its election also decreased slightly.
As shown in Figure 1, the total number of union elections overseen by the NLRB fell in 2025. Although the number of elections had risen consistently every year since 2020—reaching a total of 2,124 in 2024, the highest level in 10 years—in 2025, the number of elections fell by 30 percent to 1,498. Even before the government shutdown in October interrupted elections, the pace of elections for the first nine months of 2025 was 20 percent lower compared with 2024. This represents a return to the typical levels seen during the first Trump administration prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The number of workers voting in new NLRB-overseen union elections also fell in 2025. Figure 2 shows how this number had also steadily grown since 2020, in no small part the product of campaigns that unionized workers in difficult-to-organize service jobs as well as a series of successful high-profile strikes, with a total of 142,000 workers voting in union elections in 2024. In 2025, 59,000 fewer workers cast ballots in these union elections, a decrease of 42 percent.
Not only were there fewer NLRB-certified elections and fewer workers casting ballots, a new union’s likelihood of winning fell slightly in 2025: Although the proportion of representation elections won by unions rose from 65 percent in 2020 to over 72 percent in 2023, the union win rate fell back to 69.8 percent in 2025—still above pre-pandemic win rates but below the 10-year-high rate reached in 2023. (see Figure 3)
How the Trump administration has attacked the NLRB
When President Trump resumed office for his second term in January 2025, he took the unprecedented step of firing a member (and former chair) of the NLRB. The decisional board is supposed to have five members and needs at least three to meet quorum; at the time Gwynne Wilcox—a Biden appointee whose term was set to end in 2028—was fired on January 27, 2025, the board only had three members, meaning Trump’s decision to fire Wilcox left the board without a quorum.
Without a quorum, the board was unable to issue new decisions—and ultimately, workers were left in the lurch for 345 days, almost a year, as they awaited final board decisions regarding their possible firings for organizing activities. Although oversight of elections continued at NLRB regional offices and administrative law judges still heard cases about possible wrongdoing such as misconduct during union elections or unfair firings of labor organizers, every case can be appealed to the board, which is responsible for final decisions. And since the board could not meet to make final decisions, appealed cases were stalled until new board members were confirmed. Plus, during the six-week government shutdown, NLRB regional offices were shuttered, preventing NLRB elections from being conducted and certified.
Although the deadlock ended when two new board members, Scott Mayer and James Murphy, were sworn in on January 7, 2026, Trump’s appointees to the decisional board have a history of advocating against workers. Mayer joined the NLRB from his role as chief labor counsel for the Boeing Corp. and previously worked for management-side law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP—a firm currently representing SpaceX in a lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of the NLRB. Trump also fired Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB’s general counsel, who had directed the agency to seek stronger remedies for workers who lost their jobs after being fired for organizing; limit the use of monitoring technologies, including artificial intelligence, to spy on workers; and prevent corporations from trapping workers in noncompete agreements. Her temporary replacement revoked all of these orders; her permanent replacement, also sworn in on January 7, worked for Morgan, Lewis & Bockius as well after working at the NLRB for eight years, and at her confirmation hearing did not confirm whether she believed the NLRB itself is constitutional, saying instead that “the answer will come from the courts.”
The Trump administration’s anti-union actions are not limited to private sector organizing. A series of executive orders have stripped more than 1 million federal workers of their bargaining rights—an action that one labor historian called “the largest single action of union-busting in American history.” Several federal agencies have taken the additional step of canceling signed union contracts. A bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives passed the Protect America’s Workforce Act in December to undo this executive action, but the damage to federal organizing in the United States is already profound, and the bill still has to pass the Senate and be signed into law by Trump.
Preliminary estimates of union membership levels from 2025 suggest that, even as the administration has demonstrated its hostility toward unions, workers are still highly motivated to organize and join unions. Ordinarily, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases new data on the number of unionized workers annually in late January, but the release of data covering 2025 has been delayed due to the government shutdown until February 18, 2026. In the meantime, some researchers analyzing the underlying data have found that union membership did not decline in 2025, and in some sectors may even have grown, potentially as workers concerned about the future of their legal organizing rights express renewed interest in joining unions.
Conclusion
The Trump administration’s attacks on the NLRB erected additional hurdles for workers seeking to organize unions at their workplaces, and in 2025, fewer NLRB-overseen union elections took place, fewer workers were able to vote in NLRB elections, and fewer unions won their elections. Despite these challenges, workers’ interest in unions remains strong, and tens of thousands of workers did succeed in forming new unions in 2025. Yet whether momentum from workers interested in joining unions can continue to overcome hostility from the administration remains to be seen.