In the nearly four years that Joe Biden has been president, the National Labor Relations Board has taken an assertive — some say overly aggressive — approach to protecting workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain.

Now, SpaceX and Amazon are at the forefront of a corporate-led effort to monumentally change the labor agency. On Monday, attorneys for the two companies will try to convince a panel of judges at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that the labor agency, created by Congress in 1935, is unconstitutional.

Their lawsuits are among more than two dozen challenges brought by companies who say the NLRB’s structure gives it unchecked power to shape and enforce labor law.

A ruling in favor of the companies could make it much harder for workers to form unions and take collective action in pursuit of better wages and working conditions.

That would be an enormous setback for labor groups, who have enjoyed unprecedented support from the Biden administration, and a win for companies that have spent considerable amounts of resources over the past four years trying to keep unions out of their workplaces.

Complicating matters is the fact that President-elect Donald Trump has named SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk to co-lead a new commission focused on dismantling government bureaucracy, slashing spending and jobs. Whether the NLRB is one of the agencies Musk will advise on remains unclear.

Ultimately, these cases could make their way to the Supreme Court.

Board found fault at Amazon and Space X

The lawsuits brought by Amazon and SpaceX came after the NLRB issued complaints of its own. Agency investigations found the companies had violated the rights of their employees.

At Amazon, the issue was the company’s refusal to collectively bargain with the Amazon Labor Union. Workers at Amazon’s Staten Island, N.Y., warehouse voted to unionize in 2022.

At SpaceX, the complaint involved eight employees who said they were fired in retaliation for speaking critically of Musk.

Both companies argue that the labor agency’s structure violates the separation of powers.

“The NLRB routinely exercises authority to prosecute alleged violators of federal labor law, define the legal standards that govern the prosecutions, and weigh the facts necessary to find a violation — with only limited judicial review by Article III courts,” attorneys for SpaceX wrote in a court filing.

The companies also find fault with the president’s inability to fire NLRB board members, who serve five-year terms, and in SpaceX’s case, its administrative law judges.

Additionally, they argue the NLRB’s system for adjudicating cases denies them the right to a trial by jury.

Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board, sits at agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Monday, June 13, 2022.

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NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a Biden appointee, calls the lawsuits a distraction, pointing to the agency’s 90-year history of governing labor-management relations.

“We are trying to hold violators of our statute accountable,” she said at the National Press Club in October. “It would be chaos if the agency was not allowed to perform its functions and do it properly.”

Anticipating a slowdown in enforcement

Workers’ advocates are bracing for a slowdown in labor law enforcement in a second Trump administration.

For starters, Trump is expected to fire Abruzzo immediately, exercising power he does hold. (Biden fired Trump’s appointee to that position on his first day in office.)

Since 2021, Abruzzo, who acts as the NLRB’s prosecutor, has taken a broad view of the protections labor law offers private-sector employees. She has worked to remove barriers to organizing, most recently winning a board ruling outlawing “captive audience” meetings, or mandatory meetings at which employers try to dissuade workers from unionizing.

Trump is expected to replace Abruzzo with someone friendly to employers, who will set a new tone for enforcement. Last time around, Trump’s pick for the job was Peter Robb, a management-side labor attorney who served as lead counsel for President Ronald Reagan during the air traffic controllers’ strike.

In the SpaceX and Amazon cases, all expectations are that a Trump-appointed general counsel will not fight any ruling favorable to the companies. However, similar lawsuits filed elsewhere in the country could result in conflicting court decisions.

Over the last few years and through this year’s contentious campaign season, which was rooted in America’s deep divisions, there has been a coarsening in the way people talk to each other. We wanted to explore how some are trying to bridge divides. We asked our reporters across the NPR Network to look for examples of people working through their differences. We’re sharing those stories in our series Seeking Common Ground.

PAONIA, Colo. — On a Wednesday night at a spacious, contemporary-looking church on the edge of Paonia, a small town in western Colorado, the 40 or so members of the North Fork Community Choir ran through their regular warmups.

“Really pay attention to that ‘E’ vowel,” said music director Stephanie Helleckson, as she guided the singers through various scales and arpeggios from behind a music stand. “See if you can make that a little bit rounder as a group.”

Helleckson listened carefully to how the singers’ voices blend; the details matter in an art form that’s all about achieving harmony.

Helleckson, who comes from a musical family and has spent most of her life in Paonia, said harmony is important — not just musically, but also socially.

“Because we’re all coming from different backgrounds and different perspectives, and we’re coming together to do something together, we have to learn how to not agree with somebody, but still work with them,” said the vivacious and businesslike music director.

A view of Paonia, Colo., and the surrounding West Elk Mountains.

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The North Fork Community Choir is based in a part of the country where the politics are all over the map.

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Paonia has farming and ranching families, artists, winemakers, remote workers — and a mix of political views, one choir member says.

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The North Fork is an ideologically diverse community

Cooperation is not a given, since the North Fork Community Choir is based in a part of the country where the politics are all over the map. The singers have had to come up with creative ways to continue to sing in harmony.

“We’ve got people from pretty far right to pretty far left in the chorus,” said choir member Jan Tuin.

Tuin has been living in the area since 1964. He said his dad, an auto body repairman, moved the family from near Denver in search of a slower pace of life. Over coffee at Paonia Books, a hip, newish bookstore and cafe in downtown Paonia, Tuin said the mining, farming and ranching families who’ve been around for generations have in recent decades been joined by an influx of artists, winemakers and remote workers in fields like tech.

Choir member Jan Tuin, who helped found the first community singing group in the area, at his home in Hotchkiss, Colo.

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“And so the people here now are much more diverse, I would say,” Tuin said.

Nearly everyone in the choir is white, reflecting the area’s racial demographics. But the members range in age from 11 to 87. Some of the singers believe in God; others do not. Some own guns; others do not. When the choir required masks and/or vaccines for rehearsals at various points during the COVID-19 pandemic in accordance with federal recommendations, some were happy to comply. But at least one member quit.

Tuin said people avoid bringing up potentially controversial topics during rehearsal. “We talk about our gardens a lot,” he said, laughing.

No matter their politics and values, all of the 20 or so singers NPR spoke with for this story said they focus on music-making as a uniting force and as a way to at least temporarily forget differences. This includes choir members Mary Bachran, the recently retired mayor of blue-leaning Paonia (“We make harmonies together. It’s just so wonderful.”) and Chris Johnson, the recently appointed mayor of red-leaning Crawford, a nearby ranching community. (“We’re just all there to sing.”)

Mary Bachran, community choir member and former mayor, in downtown Paonia, Colo.

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Everything’s not good in “America”

Yet the music itself sometimes draws the differences out.

The choir’s Broadway program back in the spring is a case in point. It involved medleys from well-known musicals such as My Fair Lady, Rent, Pippin, Dear Evan Hansen — and West Side Story.

The song “America” from the latter, which premiered in 1957, might be one of the most famous in the American musical canon. But some of the lyrics describing Puerto Rico as an “ugly island” rife with disease and poverty did not sit well with singers like Ellie Roberts.

“I really struggled with that because it sort of implies that Puerto Rico stinks and why wouldn’t they leave?” Roberts said. “And it just sort of encouraged some of those stereotypes.”

Roberts, a local schoolteacher, said the chorus discussed the issue at rehearsal. “What are we celebrating and what do we not want to celebrate?” she said.

They thought about changing the lyrics, but ended up doing the song with a disclaimer that music director Helleckson made from the stage.

“You have to think about context for this piece,” Helleckson said in a video of the performance captured in May. “This piece has some things that are maybe not as acceptable in today’s day and age as they were when it first came out.”

The North Fork Community Choir practices at the North Fork Baptist Church in Paonia, Colo.

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Music director Stephanie Helleckson, who has spent most of her life in Paonia, leads community choir practice at the church.

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During community choir practice at the North Fork Baptist Church in Paonia.

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“Master of the House” an issue too

Meanwhile, other members of the ensemble brought up a different concern to do with the raucous showstopper from Les Misérables, “Master of the House.”

In the song, a seedy innkeeper and his entourage of petty criminals invoke Jesus as they fleece their customers.

“It bothered me, because I did not want to use the Lord’s name that way,” said singer Kim Johnson, a Christian counselor. Johnson said she and some others from the group discussed the matter with Helleckson and came up with alternatives to singing “Jesus.”

“I sang ‘cheeses’ instead of ‘Jesus,'” said Johnson. “It worked.”

Pushing boundaries to launch conversations

Helleckson said she knew the Broadway program would be a little bit provocative.

“It’s pushing boundaries that some people are not comfortable with in our little rural pocket of America,” Helleckson said. “And so part of programming some of this music is to actually have those conversations. So we don’t just assume that everybody’s the same as us and everybody believes the same things and acts the same way.”

According to a Chorus America report assessing the impact of group singing, choir members are more adaptable and tolerant of others than the general population. “Almost two-thirds of singers (63%) believe participating in a chorus has made them more open to and accepting of people who are different from them or hold different views,” the study noted.

New York University sociology professor Eric Klinenberg said the mere act of coming together to undertake a regular, shared activity with others, such as choral singing, can promote bridge-building. But it’s possible for such groups to go further.

“If your objective is to just get a group of people together to sing well, forget about everything else in the world, maybe you don’t need to encourage those other conversations about politics,” said Klinenberg, who studies how people gather and connect both within and across ideological lines. 

But, he said, if the objective is also to create a more decent society and bridge differences by using the relationships that you build while making music together as a foundation of trust to advance a conversation about something like politics, “that could be an amazing thing.”

Choir member Chris Johnson, the recently appointed mayor of Crawford, Colo., says: “We’re just all there to sing.”

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Choir members hug at practice the day after Election Day.

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Small steps toward greater understanding

In a small way, the issues that arose with the Broadway concert point toward this aspiration. Choir member Chris Johnson, for example, said he didn’t have a problem with West Side Story. But he doesn’t fault those who pushed for the disclaimer.

“I don’t think that explanation was necessary, but it’s OK,” he said.

And singer Linda Talbott said her mind has been expanded as a result of the faith-based objections other singers in the group had to Les Mis.

“I think I’m much more aware now of what could be objectionable to certain people,” she said. “I don’t think I thought about it. There it was in front of me, I wanted to sing it, and I did.” 

Helleckson said she would like to continue to program more material that inspires these types of conversations.

The North Fork Community Choir has been prepping for upcoming holiday performances.

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In the meantime, the ensemble is prepping for a pair of holiday performances of Handel’s Messiah. The singers said the music is challenging. But so far it’s not been too controversial.