Federal Workers Face New Round of Layoffs as Labor Rights Under Attack

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Unions for federal employees say the White House is planning thousands more layoffs, even though a federal judge in San Francisco has blocked it. This is taking place as the Trump administration has left the National Labor Relations Board paralyzed after firing Biden-appointed members upon taking office. We talk with William Gould IV, the former National Labor Relations Board Chairman, about the rights of workers during a shutdown, the ways California labor regulators could push back and the future of organized labor in the country. We also talk to Gould about his new memoir where he reflects on breaking barriers as Stanford Law’s first Black professor. The book is called “Those Who Travail and Are Heavy Laden.” Guests: William Gould IV, Professor Emeritus, Stanford Law School Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:30.7	From KQED. This is Forum. I'm Rachel Myro and for Mina Kim. Mass layoffs for federal employees, unions on a decades-long losing streak. Federal labor regulators effectively benched. Our guest today knows this game better than anyone. William B. Gould the 4th, who chaired the National Labor Relations Board
0:55.9	under President Bill Clinton, as well as the Agricultural Labor Relations Board. For roughly six
1:02.6	decades, Bill Gould has gone to bat for workers as a regulator, a mediator, a law professor,
1:09.2	and an author. His forthcoming memoir, Those Who Traveil
1:13.6	and Are Heavy-laden, tells this story and loads the bases for a great conversation today
1:19.9	about the state of American labor today and tomorrow. Bill, thank you for being here.
1:25.9	Oh, very good to be with you, Rachel.
1:28.5	Well, I thought we might start with that book title, which comes from the Bible, Matthew 1128.
1:35.4	Why do those words resonate for you?
1:38.0	Well, those words resonate with me because those were the words in a sense that I was
1:44.0	brought up with.
1:45.0	My father and I were both in the choir in St. James Episcopal Church in Long Branch, New Jersey,
1:54.0	and he would sit on one side and I sat on the other side.
1:58.0	And when the priest would read that portion of the Episcopal Mass, the liturgy,
2:05.6	the so-called comfortable words, come unto me all you that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.
2:13.6	My father and I, my father would always look at me. We always had eye contact during
2:19.5	that, during that, those words and he would as if to say to me, this is why we're here. This is
2:25.9	really why we are on this earth. And I think that that upbringing, that culture, so to speak, really influenced me in terms of my future
	...

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