Thursday, January 21, 2021
At noon, eastern standard time, on January 20, 2021, Joseph R. Biden Jr. became the 46th president of the United States, giving Democrats control of the executive branch, and, albeit by the thinnest of margins (with Vice President Kamala D. Harris presiding as president of the U.S. Senate), the legislative branch of the U.S. government for the first time since 2011. While that transition will, no doubt, impact a great many national and global issues, the focus of this article is the potential impact that this dynamic will have on U.S. labor law and policy.
Those who have been monitoring labor issues since 2008 largely know what to expect. After four years of more management-friendly labor policy, today the pendulum has started to swing in the direction of labor, just as it did in 2008. How far the pendulum swings and how fast is yet to be determined, but all signs indicate the swing could be significant. On the eve of the election, President Bid