Donald Trump likes to occasionally pretend he doesn’t 100 percent hate unions, usually by spending time with the relatively friendly building trades unions. But for anyone tempted to believe that, check out one of the people on his short list for National Labor Relations Board. Doug Seaton is a professional union-buster—and that’s something new, even for Republican presidents.
“Starting with Ronald Reagan,” Leonor writes, “Republican presidents have often named stridently anti-union executives and attorneys to the NLRB. But labor and management sources queried by POLITICO couldn't remember a previous instance when a president placed on the NLRB a ‘union avoidance’ consultant or ‘persuader,’ an occupation known colloquially as union-buster. The Labor Department requires union-busters to disclose their anti-union campaigns publicly. Seaton has done so on six occasions, most recently in May 2016.”
For reference, here’s the mission of the board Seaton could be appointed to:
The National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal agency vested with the power to safeguard employees' rights to organize and to determine whether to have unions as their bargaining representative. The agency also acts to prevent and remedy unfair labor practices committed by private sector employers and unions.
That’s exactly the mission Seaton has spent his career working against.