Trump’s actions will large­ly fall into one of four cat­e­gories: judi­cial, leg­isla­tive, exec­u­tive and at the lev­el of fed­er­al agen­cies. Each poten­tial move will take var­i­ous lev­els of coop­er­a­tion from oth­er branch­es of gov­ern­ment and vary­ing amounts of time to complete.

In 63 days, orga­nized labor is going to find itself in a new polit­i­cal real­i­ty, which it seems total­ly unpre­pared for. Don­ald Trump will be pres­i­dent; the Repub­li­cans will con­trol the House and Sen­ate and one of Trump’s first tasks will be to nom­i­nate a new Supreme Court jus­tice. Though Trump was tight-lipped about spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy pro­pos­als, his cam­paign and the cur­rent con­sti­tu­tion of the Repub­li­can par­ty do not bode well for labor.

On Day 1 of his new admin­is­tra­tion, Pres­i­dent Trump can sim­ply rescind many of Barack Obama’s exec­u­tive orders that ben­e­fit­ed large groups of work­ers. Chief among these were EO 13673, which required prospec­tive fed­er­al con­trac­tors to dis­close vio­la­tions of state and fed­er­al labor laws, and helped pro­tect employ­ees of con­trac­tors from wage theft and manda­to­ry arbi­tra­tion of a vari­ety of employ­ment claims. Sim­i­lar­ly, EO 13494 made con­trac­tor expens­es asso­ci­at­ed with union bust­ing non-allow­able, there­by help­ing to ensure that work­ers can exer­cise their labor rights.

At the agency lev­el, Trump will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to fill vacan­cies on the five-per­son Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board (NLRB), effec­tive­ly turn­ing what has been one of the most pro-work­er boards in recent mem­o­ry into one that is more con­cerned with employ­ers’ inter­ests. The NLRB is one of the more politi­cized fed­er­al agen­cies, and it is not uncom­mon for a new NLRB to over­turn a pre­vi­ous board’s rul­ings. A con­ser­v­a­tive board would put into jeop­ardy recent gains, includ­ing the require­ment of joint employ­ers to bar­gain with work­ers, the rights of grad­u­ate stu­dents to form unions, the rights of adjuncts at reli­gious col­leges to form unions and the pro­tec­tions from class action waivers in employ­ment arbi­tra­tion agree­ments, which effec­tive­ly block access to jus­tice for too many.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Trump can imme­di­ate­ly dis­miss the entire Fed­er­al Ser­vice Impass­es Pan­el (FSIP) and appoint his own mem­bers. The FSIP is a lit­tle-known fed­er­al agency that func­tions like a mini-NLRB to resolve dis­putes between union­ized fed­er­al employ­ees and the government.

At the leg­isla­tive lev­el, var­i­ous anti-work­er bills sit ready for a GOP-led push. Per­haps chief among them is the Nation­al Right to Work Act, which would place every pri­vate sec­tor employ­ee (includ­ing air­line and rail­way employ­ees cur­rent­ly under the Rail­way Labor Act) under right-to-work. Right-to-work is the mis­lead­ing law that pro­hibits unions from requir­ing that work­ers rep­re­sent­ed by the union pay their fair share. Such a bill was intro­duced last year by Sen. Rand Paul, and it had 29 co-spon­sors, includ­ing Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell. Trump announced on the cam­paign trail that his ​“posi­tion on right-to-work is 100 per­cent,” so this will like­ly be an area where he has com­mon cause with the GOP-con­trolled Congress.

At the judi­cial lev­el, there is also a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that we will see a sequel to the Friedrichs case at the Supreme Court. Friedrichs was wide­ly antic­i­pat­ed to bar fair share fees and place all pub­lic sec­tor employ­ees under right-to-work, but end­ed in a dead­lock after Jus­tice Antonin Scalia’s death. It is like­ly that any Supreme Court jus­tice that Trump choos­es will be as crit­i­cal of fair share fees as Jus­tices Samuel Ali­to and John Roberts, and would pro­vide a crit­i­cal fifth vote in chang­ing long-stand­ing prece­dent regard­ing the allowance of such fees. Groups like the Nation­al Right to Work Com­mit­tee and Cen­ter for Indi­vid­ual Rights often have cas­es in the pipeline that could be pushed to the Supreme Court when the oppor­tu­ni­ty arises.

Sim­i­lar­ly, at the judi­cial lev­el, Trump will like­ly have his Depart­ment of Labor drop appeals to court deci­sions that enjoined or over­turned pro-work­er rules, such as the rule requir­ing union-busters to dis­close when they are involved in an orga­niz­ing cam­paign. Drop­ping the appeals would be an easy route to kill the rules, rather than going through a more time con­sum­ing rule­mak­ing process to rescind them.

All indi­ca­tions are that labor has been caught unpre­pared for a Pres­i­dent Trump and a GOP-con­trolled Con­gress and Supreme Court. With such broad con­trol over every branch of gov­ern­ment, Trump may be able to not only roll back many of Obama’s accom­plish­ments, but also change the face of labor law for decades to come.