New England Biz Law Update
The number of union election petitions received by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is up 27% since fiscal year 2023, the agency has announced.
The NLRB received 3,286 union election petitions from October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024, as compared to FY 2023, when the agency received 2,593 petitions.
That is more than double the number of petitions received in FY 2021, when the NLRB received 1,638 petitions.
Unfair labor practice charge filings rose similarly. From FY 2023 to FY 2024, unfair labor practice charge filings increased 7%, from 19,869 filing to 21,292 filings.
Overall, the NLRB’s field offices received a total of 24,578 case filings, the highest total case intake in over a decade.
“The surge in cases we’ve received in the last few years is a testament to workers knowing and exercising their rights under the National Labor Relations Act and to our board agents’ accessibility and respectful engagement with them,” said NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo in a statement. “Our committed and talented NLRB staff continue to process cases with professionalism and care, despite working with limited resources. I urge Congress to fully fund the NLRB so that employers, unions, and workers receive prompt and meaningful case resolutions.”
The increase in cases filed in the NLRB’s field offices also caused an increase in cases for the adjudicative side of the agency.
In FY 2024, the board received 393 unfair labor practice and representation cases, up 22% from 321 cases last year.
The board issued 259 decisions, a 5% uptick from FY 2023. The NLRB also experienced a rise in case intake, ending FY 2024 with 288 pending cases, 46% more than the 197 pending cases at the end of FY 2023.
“The NLRB’s dedicated employees have worked hard this year to process cases efficiently, but the ongoing surge in case intake continues to increase our backlog,” said Chairman Lauren McFerran. “Additional resources are necessary to enable the Board to expand staffing capacity and ensure that the workers, employers, and unions that rely on our agency benefit from timely resolution of their labor disputes.”
The increased workload on both sides of the agency comes as the NLRB continues to deal with funding and staffing shortages, according to the agency’s statement. In the past two decades, staffing in field offices has been reduced by 50%.
After the NLRB received the same funding annually for almost a decade, in FY 2023 Congress provided a $25 million increase. Congress allocated the same amount of funding for the agency for FY 2024.
