Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, former Democrats turned Independents, handed the incoming Trump administration control of a key labor rights watchdog by siding with Senate Republicans on another vote as they near the end of their terms in Congress.
The two retiring centrist lawmakers voted on Wednesday to block the nomination of Lauren McFerran to another term on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The vote sinks an effort by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to extend a 3-2 Democratic majority on the board into 2026, and allows Donald Trump to pick her replacement when he takes office, giving the GOP a majority on the board. The NLRB oversees employees’ rights to organize, addresses unfair labor practices, and adjudicates worker disputes at companies like Amazon, Trader Joe’s, and Starbucks.
With the Trump administration expected to weaken the NLRB’s labor regulations, Democrats had urged Schumer to vote on another five-year term for McFerran. Sinema (Ariz.) voted “no” with every Senate GOP member except Roger Marshall (Kansas), who did not vote. Congressional reporter Jamie Dupree noted that Sinema had missed numerous recent votes, but not this one. With the cloture vote tied 49-49, Manchin (W.V.) returned to the chamber floor to vote “no” on advancing, sealing it.
Trump’s NLRB picks during his first term largely sided with business against workers. Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said that the senators who blocked McFarren’s re-nomination “voted against the working people of this country.”
Around 140 former Trump administration employees were involved in the Project 2025 conservative policy agenda laid out by the Heritage Foundation, a blueprint that seeks to quash the ability of private-sector workers to form unions, severely restrict or even ban public-sector unions, undermine long-standing worker protections, and roll back national labor rules such as overtime pay.
Manchin told reporters that his opposition was driven by McFerran’s support for a “joint-employer” rule, which holds that a company might be considered a joint employer if it controls working conditions or employees’ wages and hours, despite not being the primary employer. The rule was successfully challenged in court by the powerful U.S Chamber of Commerce, annually among the top lobbying spenders in D.C. Among the scores more business groups that joined a coalition letter against the NLRB rule included the National Retail Federation, whose leaders include executives from Walmart and Target, and the Real Estate Roundtable.
Yesterday’s votes are being seen by progressives as a fitting cap on Manchin and Sinema’s record in blocking the Democrats’ legislative agenda during the first two years of the Biden administration. On one front, Manchin and Sinema were the lone Democratic holdouts against reforming the Senate filibuster rules to be able to hold votes on bills with a majority in favor of proceeding—a reform that would have cleared the way for a vote on the major House Democrat-passed government ethics and election reform bill, the For the People Act. (The voting rights bill was twice filibustered by the Senate GOP and expired at the end of 2022.)
In a climactic appearance on Fox News in December 2021, Manchin dealt the fatal blow to the Democrats’ social spending and climate package, the Build Back Better Act (known as the BBB). In the key fourth quarter of that year, Manchin posted his highest-ever fundraising total in a year-end report, with contributions flowing in from business PACs like Verizon and coal companies. The sweeping legislation would have included a major Clean Energy Performance Program (CEPP) to promote renewable energy, composed of grant and penalty incentives that mirror aspects of a clean energy standard, as well as a 15% minimum tax rate on large corporations that often dodge taxes.
As Sludge reported in August 2021, Manchin, as governor of West Virginia in 2009, directed the state legislature to pass an energy bill that specifically defined “alternative fuels” as including so-called waste coal—the niche business of his family-held company, in which his stake is worth up to $5 million. The secretive family coal business provided Manchin with more than $5.2 million in income from 2010 into 2021.
In the first quarter of 2021, Sinema became a meme by voting thumbs-down on a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $15, a measure being combated by the U.S. Chamber. Later that year, Sinema single-handedly killed a plan to raise revenue for the BBB by reducing the Republican-passed tax cuts for large corporations.
Also in 2021, Sinema was one of three Senate Democrats withholding support for the pro-union PRO Act, first introduced in 2021. A top legislative priority of labor unions, the PRO Act would, among many updates to labor law, allow the NLRB to set meaningful penalties for companies and executives that violate workers’ rights. Under the PRO Act, employees and the NLRB would set union procedures without employer involvement or interference through “captive audience” meetings, reducing the prospect of a long litigation process with the board. The measure is fiercely opposed by the U.S. Chamber and other business lobbying groups.
In 2022, Sinema’s notoriety grew when she demanded that Senate Democrats remove provisions from the Inflation Reduction Act that would have narrowed the “carried interest” loophole used by investment managers, like private equity executives, to reduce their tax rates. Her campaign committees were raking in donations from the investment industry, much of it going to fund luxury travel and fundraising trips.
Big Business Donors
Both Manchin and Sinema’s congressional runs were buoyed by hefty shares of corporate cash. Manchin’s top donor industry, across his entire Senate career, has been securities and investment, in OpenSecrets’ calculations, and employees of financial firms like Goldman Sachs have been among his top career contributors. Sinema’s career congressional haul of almost $5 million from the securities and investment industry is close to double that of Manchin’s, and employees of major investment firms like Blackstone and Apollo Global are among her top contributors.
After bowing out of a Senate re-election contest in West Virginia and opting against a presidential run, Manchin’s next move was to launch a centrist nonprofit with his daughter, Heather Bresch, for which they are seeking to raise $100 million. Sinema, who re-registered as an Independent in December 2022, bowed out of a re-election contest in Arizona.
Several big-name Republican megadonors made rare contributions across the aisle to Manchin and Sinema as the pair played out their dissatisfaction with the Democrats’ major budget reconciliation bill, the BBB, in 2021. They included Timothy Mellon, a gigantic donor to the pro-Trump super PAC this cycle, who donated to Manchin, and private equity billionaire John W. Childs gave to Sinema.
