Worker Protection Agencies Announce Collaboration Agreements

U.S. worker protection agencies are engaging in information sharing and joint enforcement initiatives to target employers engaged in workers’ rights violations. The National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) General Counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, recently issued a memorandum highlighting the Board’s work to shore up worker protections and embrace the recommendations recently reported by the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment.

The NLRB signed Memorandums of Understandings that establish ground rules for information-sharing, investigation, enforcement, training, and outreach with the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD) and Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS). The General Counsel announced that she has initiated conversations with other agencies to establish similar memorandums. The DOL and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) are partnering with the NLRB to establish a series of webinars that focus on combatting employer retaliation. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are discussing partnerships to address “unfair methods of competition that undermine workers’ rights.”

In her memorandum, the General Counsel encouraged all regional NLRB offices to develop similar inter-agency partnerships to engage in joint enforcement and information sharing activities with their local counterparts. President Biden has made it a policy of his administration to encourage worker organizing and collective bargaining.

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