NLRB advances ambitious agenda

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) continues to be the vanguard for the Biden administration’s proworker, prounion agenda. The Board is also acting on the administration’s goal of creating coordinated, multiagency efforts to support its policy goals and using nontraditional enforcement mechanisms to do so. The most recent examples of this coordination are the two Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) the NLRB has reached with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division.

The MOU with the NLRB and the FTC provides the agencies will share information and coordinate investigations in pursuit of anticompetitive conduct that could violate both federal labor and antitrust laws. The ambitious protocols in the MOU include cross-training each other’s agents to help them identify violations of the other agency’s applicable law. The MOU with the NLRB and the DOJ’s Antitrust Division has the same goal and supports information sharing, coordinated investigations, and cross-training of agency staff.

Both MOUs will likely yield more focused investigations, especially for those in the tech and “gig” sectors, where concerns about worker misclassification and monopolistic practices come together. The MOUs are the first tangible sign that the energy of the NLRB is motivating other agencies to act on their progressive pronouncements.

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