Originally published in the Summer/Fall 2025 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 77, printed December 11. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Summer/Fall 2025 issue or to download the full PDF, see this post. For other issues dating back to 2012, see the Full Issues page.

By Christopher Walker

In our last issue, the Defender reported on the court victory of workers at Mom’s Siam, a Thai food restaurant in Richmond’s Carytown.

The workers had lodged and won an Unfair Labor Practices (ULP) complaint against the owner of Mom’s Siam for firing them for union organizing at work – a direct violation of federal law.

The judge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), ruling in the workers’ favor, ordered the restaurant’s owner to pay back pay to all nine employees named in the complaint, and also ruled that eight of the nine must be offered their jobs back.

Well, what happened next?

Nothing, so far. The Defender spoke this December with one of the workers involved in the organizing and the successful ULP case, who shared that they have yet to receive any back pay from Mom’s Siam. The NLRB shared a document with the workers with instructions for calculating back pay, but has taken no further steps to secure the pay.

The former Mom’s Siam employee explained that the delay in receiving the back pay was a direct result of President Donald Trump’s decision to fire NLRB Chair Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black woman to serve as an NLRB chair. Because of this firing, later deemed legal by the U.S. Supreme Court, the NLRB lacks the quorum, or required number of members, to operate and enforce its ruling in the Mom’s Siam case.

In December 2024, former President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats failed to confirm their ostensibly pro-labor NLRBchair candidate, Lauren McFerran. This created the circumstances for Trump’s firing of Wilcox, leaving the board without a quorum, and therefore without the power to claim back pay from Mom’s Siam for the workers.

The former Mom’s Siam employee said the frustration of the organizing workers was mixed with the working-class reality of their lives. All of the workers have found new jobs and have done their best to move on in the absence of justice. They keep in touch via group chat, but none have heard anything from the Mom’s Siam owner.

Union organizing efforts and ongoing struggles like the one at Mom’s Siam illustrate how workers face challenges well beyond those they can beat in individual workplaces. The Trump administration is well aware that its firing of Wilcox prevents the NLRB from enforcing labor law and knows the effects this will have on workers across the country. From small businesses to the highest levels of government, workers must take on individuals and groups who act aggressively and antagonistically towards worker power.

This would be a good time to remember that the federal government created the NLRB in the 1930s as a result of mass, national worker unrest and collective activism.

Grassroots labor organizing, the kind the Mom’s Siam workers took on, is a good first step toward building the worker power necessary to demand and get what workers want and need.