In today’s News and Commentary, Amazon wins a preliminary injunction against enforcement of New York’s private sector bargaining law, ALJs resume deciding ULPs following the shutdown, and the CFPB tells the NTEU that it intends to make unilateral changes without bargaining.

Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York granted Amazon’s request for a preliminary injunction of New York’s State Employment Relations Act amendment that would have allowed the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to assert jurisdiction in private-sector labor disputes when the Board is unable to act. Amazon sued in response to the Amazon Labor Union’s filing of an unfair labor practice charge with the New York Public Employment Relations Board. The court found that Amazon was likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that New York’s law is Garmon preempted by the NLRA. New York had argued that unique circumstances—the Board’s lack of quorum—justified an exception to preemption. The court noted that Garmon does not include such an exception. According to the court, when Congress created the quorum requirement, it understood that there might be instances where the NLRB lacked a quorum.

Also yesterday, an ALJ for the NLRB dismissed an unfair labor practice charge, the first ALJ decision since before the government shutdown. The California Federation of Teachers had argued that ArtCenter College of Design had failed to provide the union the opportunity to bargain over its plan to realign management structure. That plan included moving some unit members into management positions.

On Tuesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau told the NTEU that it intends to impose unilateral changes to terms in its collective bargaining agreement. According to Bloomberg Law, the CFPB claimed that it would modify “CBA provisions that excessively interfere with management rights.” The CFPB claims the unilateral changes are necessary because the CFPB is facing a funding shortage after Trump’s omnibus bill that cut the amount of funding it can request from the Fed nearly in half. The CFPB’s decision comes after the NTEU filed a motion Sunday requesting that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia clarify that a failure to request additional funding would violate the court’s earlier decision that prohibited shutting down the agency.