The most remarkable thing about this case is that the USPS, a corporation fully owned by the federal government, is arguing that the NLRB does not have the authority to order make-whole relief. The Board made the ordering of make-whole relief part of its standard remedial practice in the 2022 case Thryv.
Specifically, the USPS argues that this kind of relief exceeds the agency’s statutory and constitutional authority. This is something that private employers have been arguing since Thryv was decided, but it is weird to see the USPS, which is itself part of the federal government, making this argument. Shouldn’t the Biden administration be telling the USPS to cut it out, lest they manage to undermine one of the Biden NLRB’s major accomplishments?
For now, what the USPS has done in this case doesn’t really matter. They challenged the make-whole remedy knowing that the NLRB would reject that challenge. But the reason you would normally do something like that is to set up for an appeal into a circuit court. The Biden administration should step in to make sure that the USPS does not make any such appeal and simply complies with the NLRB order in this case.
