November 18, 2022

The Honorable Charles Schumer

The Honorable Patrick Leahy

United States Senate

Washington, D.C., 20510

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi

The Honorable Rosa DeLauro

United States House of Representatives

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Leader Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Leahy, and Chair DeLauro:

As organizations committed to workers’ rights, civil rights, and the ongoing ability of working people to organize into unions, we call on you to address the urgent funding crisis facing the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by increasing agency funding before the end of the year to $368 million dollars.

Over the last nine years, Congress has passed legislation to fund the government but has done so without once raising the amount of funding allocated to the NLRB. Because of inflation, this has amounted to a budget decrease of 25 percent in real dollars, adjusted for inflation. This is untenable. The agency is now in dire financial straits, unable to efficiently carry out its basic functions, including timely processing of union representation petitions, union elections, and investigating and prosecuting unfair labor practices and similar work.

At the same time as the agency is experiencing a financial crisis, it is also facing a wave of case intakes. Last month, the Board reported the largest single-year increase (from 2021 to 2022) of ULP and representation petitions since FY1976 and the largest percentage increase since FY1959. This matches the massive energy from workers organizing across the country at record rates. Public approval of unions is at its highest point since 1965. In the past few weeks, tens of thousands of workers participated in strikes, from the University of California to Starbucks, to Warrior Met Coal, to HarperCollins.

It is critical that Congress respond to this wave of worker organizing with the resources to fund the agency charged with upholding our nation's labor law. Far too often, worker organizing is met with virulent and illegal anti-union organizing. Workers may be fired or subjected to scare tactics to convince them to vote against the union. When violations of the law occur, the NLRB must be equipped to efficiently and fully investigate and hold employers accountable. If the Board is unable to fulfill its functions and hold employers accountable for illegal anti-union behavior, workers attempting to organize could lose faith in the entire process of trying to form a union and collectively bargain with their employers.

Now is the time to strengthen the NLRB, not let it wither. An agency that can fairly adjudicate labor disputes and swiftly process petitions for new union elections is critical for ensuring that workers are not undercut as they seek to organize into unions. Unions are important in many ways: unions strengthen our democracy by boosting civic participation and lowering inequality; unions improve wages for all workers, not just unionized workers; unions lessen gender and racial wage gaps; and unions empower workers to bargain and win affordable healthcare, paid sick leave, retirement benefits, paid vacation, and more.

As you approach end of the year funding negotiations, we urge you to prioritize an increase in funding for the NLRB, to ensure that the critical work of the agency can continue.

Sincerely,