On Jan. 27, President Donald Trump fired National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) President Gwynne Wilcox, a Democrat who had been confirmed for her second five-year term in September 2023. Wilcox is now pursuing a lawsuit against Trump. That same day, Trump fired NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo who, known for her forceful enforcement of the NLRB’s mandate, was also an appointee of former president Joe Biden.
With only two members left on the NLRB and three vacant seats, the NLRB’s powers are currently paralyzed, as a three-member quorum is legally required for the board to decide cases. Here at Princeton University, the NLRB primarily assists in administering union votes and providing legal support for unionizers.
“It has already started much worse than it was in [Trump’s] first term, simply because of the intensity and speed of the attacks, the depth and breadth of them — and also aggravated by the fact that there is really not much going on in the Democratic Party to oppose this,” Associate Professor of History Vera S. Candiani, who holds extensive experience in union organizing and bargaining, told The Daily Princetonian.
The NLRB is “the body that guarantees our legal rights to organize as a union,” explained Judy Kim, a postdoctoral researcher at the University Center for Human Values and member of the bargaining committee for Princeton University Postdocs and Scholars-United Auto Workers (PUPS-UAW).
Kim described how the Trump administration’s actions have prompted PUPS-UAW to consider more demands, including a proposal strengthening the rights of international postdoctoral researchers in response to Trump’s crackdowns on immigration. According to Kim, PUPS-UAW has also been considering demanding a “transitional emergency fund” that would cover a postdoc’s salary if it is frozen due to executive orders that have slashed funding for the NIH and targeted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion-related projects.
During Trump’s first term, the NLRB issued a rule that would have denied graduate students at private universities their right to collective bargaining, undermining a 2016 decision that recognized graduate students as employees and allowed them to unionize. This rule was withdrawn by the Biden-appointed NLRB in 2021.
“The NLRB’s power generally has been shrinking over the years in the United States, but was especially under threat during Trump,” Kim said. “I think labor rights are going to be eroded by Trump.”
Candiani is critical of labor unions’ alliance with both the Democrats and Republicans and anticipates that Trump’s second term will be “significantly worse.” She pointed to his reliance on executive orders and “governing by decree,” expressing concern that the courts may become overwhelmed by the resulting surge in legal challenges.
“Trump, through all of his measures, is rolling out an extremely aggressive platform against workers in this country as a whole, and he’s doing that by attacking immigrants,” Candiani said. “[Unions] should be aggressively going out to places where undocumented workers are and immigrant workers are, organizing them to be able to help mobilize the sector of the population or protect it.”
Progressive groups at Princeton, however, state concerns about involving immigrant communities specifically when mobilizing under Trump’s administration. At a panel on Feb. 12, JStreet, AJP, Sunrise Princeton, and Princeton College Democrats shared their fears and plans for organizing under Trump.
“I can speak as someone who is from a family of immigrants. I have a general degree of privilege, but, at the same time, I still feel fear sometimes stepping into a protest environment,” Mira Eashwaran ’26 of Sunrise Princeton said during the panel. “I was never comfortable with that before Princeton. I know a lot of people that aren’t, especially with the new fear tactics that Donald Trump is putting down.”
Mira Eashwaran is an associate Features editor for the ‘Prince.’
Ryan Divan ’28, one of the panel’s organizers, told the ‘Prince’ that one of his major concerns about organizing under Trump is how public involvement could impact international students. “I think right now, in a Trump administration, [protesting as an international student is] becoming harder to do, especially with deportation [as a risk].”
Quentin Colon Roosevelt ’27 of Princeton College Democrats expressed his reassurance in the University’s protections of international students, telling the ‘Prince,’ “it seems like [the University] is prepared, or at least they are preparing. I think there’s going to be stuff that catches them off guard, because that is inevitable with the Trump administration. But I think so far, actually, they’re doing a pretty good job.”
“[Trump] behaves so erratically that he might believe something one day, and he might switch it up the next day because some billionaire told him that they didn’t like it, so it’s really hard to keep up,” Roosevelt said.
Despite changes to NLRB leadership and attacks on worker rights nationwide, members of PUPS-UAW are still hopeful about the strength of collective bargaining.
“A union isn’t strong just because some law or formal institution says that it is,” Kim said. “The basic core of a union is collective power.”
“I think we are really not extremely worried or scared about losing the legal institutional protections, because at the end of the day, it will be up to us and how much collective power we can actually build,” Kim continued.
The postdocs also hope that fears arising from the Trump administration will encourage organizing. “We talk a lot about agitating, like identifying what people are worked up about,” Jessica Ng, a postdoctoral research assistant at the High Meadows Environmental Institute, explained. “And it seems like the recent executive orders have been doing a lot of that for us.”
“I am actually kind of hopeful, because the NSF funding, NIH funding [is] affecting scientists. I’ve never seen scientists being so vocal and stressed out and willing to go to phone banks and call their senators and sign petitions,” Kim said.
Kim added, “I think there’s a lot of potential and a lot of energy that we just need to organize and do something with.”
Nikki Han is an assistant News editor and a contributing Features writer. She is from Sydney, Australia, and runs the Faculty, Graduate Students, and Alumni coverage area.
Sena Chang is a senior News writer for the ‘Prince’ from Tokyo, Japan. She typically covers campus and community activism, the state of higher education, and alumni news.
Please send corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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