The National Labor Relations Board took a significant step toward a potential new era of labor law earlier this week. On Monday, August 17, 2026, James R. Macy was sworn in as a Member of the Board. President Donald Trump nominated Macy in April for a term extending through August 27, 2030. Macy, who is from Wisconsin, brings an unusual combination of experience to the Board: more than four decades of management-side labor and employment practice, followed by senior positions at the United States Department of Labor, including Director of the Office of Workers' Compensation Programs and Acting Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division.
Macy's arrival is significant not merely because of his individual background, but because it gives the Board a functioning three-member Republican majority for the first time since the first Trump administration. Macy joins Trump appointees Chairman James R. Murphy and Member Scott Mayer, with Democratic Member David Prouty providing the fourth vote. One Board position remains vacant.
The Republican majority now has the three-vote majority necessary to reconsider—and potentially reverse—a substantial number of the major precedents adopted during the Biden Board.
For employers and management-side labor counsel, the question is therefore no longer whether the Board's recent precedents will be revisited. The more important questions are how quickly and how far the Board will go, and which precedents it will scrutinize.
Stericycle: A Return to a More Employer-Friendly Standard for Workplace Rules
One of the most likely targets for reversal is Stericycle, Inc., 372 NLRB No. 113 (2023). Stericycle established a stringent standard for evaluating facially neutral workplace rules. Under this decision, the Board asks whether an employee could reasonably interpret a rule to restrict the exercise of Section 7 rights, with the employer's legitimate justifications considered only after the General Counsel establishes that employees could reasonably construe the rule to interfere with protected activity.
The practical consequence has been substantial. Handbook and other work rules concerning confidentiality, civility, respectful workplace conduct, communications with the media, workplace investigations, social media, solicitation, and use of company property have been vulnerable to challenge even when the employer had legitimate business reasons for adopting them.
A Republican majority on the NLRB is highly likely to reconsider Stericycle and move back toward the more employer-protective framework that preceded it. The likely emphasis will be on reading workplace rules in context, considering legitimate employer interests, and requiring a more concrete showing that employees would reasonably understand a rule to prohibit protected activity.
For employers, that could substantially reduce the risk that ordinary handbook provisions will be deemed unlawful merely because they could conceivably be interpreted to implicate Section 7 rights.
Cemex: A Particularly Important Issue for Union Organizing
Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC, 372 NLRB No. 130 (2023) is likely to receive especially close attention. Cemex fundamentally altered the rules governing union recognition by creating circumstances in which an employer can be required to recognize and bargain with a union based upon authorization cards rather than proceeding to a secret-ballot election.
Under Cemex, when a union presents evidence of majority support, an employer that declines recognition and seeks an election assumes substantial risk. In addition, certain unfair labor practices committed during the period following the demand for recognition can result in a bargaining order rather than merely a rerun election. The Board described the framework as necessary to protect employees' rights and the integrity of Board elections.
Cemex is already under significant judicial pressure. In March 2026, the Sixth Circuit rejected the Board's Cemex framework and concluded that the Board had effectively engaged in rulemaking through adjudication. The Ninth Circuit subsequently declined to reach the merits of the Cemex standard in an unpublished decision, leaving the Board's framework subject to continuing uncertainty.
The new majority therefore has both a policy reason and an institutional opportunity to reconsider Cemex. A return to the traditional Gissel framework would be a major victory for employers. Under the Gissel standard, Union authorization cards would remain important evidence of employee support, but the circumstances in which the Board could dispense with a secret-ballot election would be substantially narrowed.
For management, this is one of the most consequential potential changes because it directly affects how employers respond when confronted with a union's demand for recognition.
Amazon and Captive-Audience Meetings
Perhaps the most visible reversal could involve Amazon.com Services LLC, 373 NLRB No. 136 (2024), which held that mandatory meetings in which an employer communicates its views about unionization violate the NLRA. The Amazon decision represented a dramatic departure from nearly eight decades of Board precedent permitting employers to require employees to attend such meetings, subject to the limits of Section 8(c) and other provisions of the Act.
A reversal of Amazon would restore the basic rule that employers may require employees to attend meetings during an organizing campaign at which management expresses its views about unionization, provided the employer does not engage in threats, coercion, interrogation, promises, or other unlawful conduct.
In certain states, reversal of Amazon would not necessarily mean a return to the old playbook. Over ten states now have their own statutory restrictions concerning captive-audience meetings. Employers therefore will need to analyze both federal and state law before requiring attendance at meetings concerning unionization.
McLaren Macomb and Confidentiality
The Board is also likely to revisit McLaren Macomb, 372 NLRB No. 58 (2023), which held that employers violate the NLRA by offering severance agreements containing broad confidentiality and non-disparagement provisions that unlawfully restrict employees' Section 7 rights.
A Republican Board could narrow McLaren Macomb substantially, particularly with respect to agreements involving employees who are not actively engaged in protected activity and provisions that can reasonably be interpreted as protecting legitimate employer interests rather than suppressing Section 7 rights.
Thryv, Lion Elastomers, and Remedies
Another likely area of change is the Board's aggressive approach to remedies.
In Thryv, Inc., 372 NLRB No. 22 (2022), the Board substantially expanded the potential remedies available for unfair labor practices by authorizing compensation for consequential financial harms flowing from an employer's unlawful conduct.
Similarly, Lion Elastomers LLC, 372 NLRB No. 83 (2023) restored the broader Atlantic Steel framework governing when abusive or offensive employee conduct remains protected under Section 7.
A Republican majority is likely to reconsider both decisions. The probable direction is toward more predictable and traditional remedies and a clearer distinction between protected concerted activity and genuinely abusive or insubordinate conduct.
What Employers Should Expect
Macy's arrival does not mean that every Biden-era precedent will disappear overnight. Board precedent generally changes through actual cases, and some decisions are already constrained by federal appellate decisions. Moreover, the Board remains subject to judicial review, and several of these issues may ultimately reach the Supreme Court.
But the direction is becoming increasingly clear.
The Republican majority is likely to pursue a labor-law philosophy characterized by:
- Greater deference to legitimate employer business interests;
- A narrower interpretation of Section 7 interference;
- Greater protection for employer speech during organizing campaigns;
- Restoration of the secret-ballot election as the preferred method of determining employee choice;
- More employer flexibility in drafting and enforcing workplace policies;
- Greater protection for employer confidentiality, non-disparagement and severance provisions;
- More traditional limits on consequential remedies; and
- A narrower definition of protected employee misconduct.
The significance of James Macy's appointment, therefore, is not simply that the Board has gained another Republican vote. The Board now has the votes to begin systematically dismantling much of the Biden-era labor-law architecture.
For employers, the immediate lesson is not to assume that current law has already changed. Until the Board actually reverses a precedent—and until courts address the resulting challenges—existing law remains operative. But employers and labor counsel should begin planning for a materially different NLRB landscape, particularly in union organizing campaigns, handbook and policy reviews, employee discipline, severance agreements, and collective-bargaining strategy.
In that respect, the addition of Macy to the Board on August 17, 2026 may prove to be an important inflection point for federal labor law over the next few years.
This blog will continue to keep you updated as NLRB precedent is altered or reversed.
