For­mer Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan had a long his­to­ry of clash­ing with orga­nized labor, but his most infa­mous moment came in 1981, when he bust­ed the Pro­fes­sion­al Air Traf­fic Con­trollers Orga­ni­za­tion (PAT­CO) and fired more than 11,300 air traf­fic con­trollers who were on strike. This act weak­ened the pow­er of U.S. unions and set the stage for an all-out assault on orga­niz­ing rights.

Thir­ty-six years lat­er, Reagan’s lead attor­ney in the air traf­fic con­trollers case is poised to make deci­sions about thou­sands of unfair labor prac­tices through­out the country.

As antic­i­pat­ed, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has nom­i­nat­ed the man­age­ment-side labor attor­ney Peter Robb, of Downs Rach­lin Mar­tin in Ver­mont, to serve as gen­er­al coun­sel for the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board (NLRB). This is a four-year posi­tion, and the indi­vid­ual who holds it is respon­si­ble for inves­ti­gat­ing unfair labor prac­tices. Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion gen­er­al coun­sel Richard Griffin’s term expires this Novem­ber and, if con­firmed, Robb would take over the position.

In 1981, Robb filed unfair labor prac­tice charges against PAT­CO on behalf of the Fed­er­al Labor Rela­tions Author­i­ty (FLRA) after a court ruled that the air traf­fic con­trollers’ strike was ille­gal. The FLRA case led to the decer­ti­fi­ca­tion of PAT­CO, and Rea­gan sub­se­quent­ly banned most strik­ing work­ers from fed­er­al ser­vice for their rest of their lives.

Reagan’s move set a new prece­dent for employ­ers, embold­en­ing them to attack labor more open­ly. In an inter­view with The Real News Net­work from 2014, Joseph McCartin, George­town his­to­ry pro­fes­sor and author of Col­li­sion Course: Ronald Rea­gan, the Air Traf­fic Con­trollers, and the Strike that Changed Amer­i­ca, explained the long-term impact. ​“When Ronald Rea­gan replaced the air traf­fic con­trollers [in] 1981, it was still not com­mon for Amer­i­can employ­ers in the pri­vate sec­tor to deal with strikes by try­ing to break them and by per­ma­nent­ly replac­ing work­ers who’d gone out on strike,” said McCartin, ​“Employ­ers saw that Rea­gan was able to do this and, in effect, get away with it. Many pri­vate-sec­tor employ­ers took a sim­i­lar­ly hard line when work­ers went out on strike in the pri­vate sector.”

Robb’s con­nec­tions to union bust­ing cer­tain­ly don’t end with the land­mark PAT­CO case. In 2014, he was hired by the Domin­ion Nuclear pow­er plant when the Inter­na­tion­al Broth­er­hood of Elec­tri­cal Work­ers (IBEW) began orga­niz­ing work­ers. The Downs Rach­lin Mar­tin web­site con­tains a blurb boast­ing that Robb ​“rep­re­sent­ed a major nation­al cor­po­ra­tion in a Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board rep­re­sen­ta­tion case pro­ceed­ing, which had 34-days of hear­ing over 3 months to resolve 80 con­test­ed clas­si­fi­ca­tions cov­er­ing hun­dreds of employees.”

In an inter­view this Sep­tem­ber, John Fer­nan­des, a busi­ness man­ag­er for IBEW Local 457, told Bloomberg BNA that Robb rep­re­sent­ed used ​“scorched earth” tac­tics to thwart the orga­niz­ing efforts. Fer­nan­des says the plant added work­ers to the pro­posed unit in order to water down the union vote and sent videos of man­agers explain­ing the dan­gers of union­iz­ing to the homes of employ­ees. Ulti­mate­ly, the plant was able to add more than 150 work­ers to the orig­i­nal peti­tion and defeat the orga­niz­ing drive.

“[Robb] han­dled most of the direct exam­i­na­tions, and his wit­ness­es were well-schooled in advance — he’d ask one ques­tion and they’d go on for­ev­er,” Fer­nan­des told Bloomberg BNA. ​“I was at a dis­ad­van­tage, not being an attor­ney, but [the legal fees] would’ve been over­whelm­ing for our local to pay … we cer­tain­ly viewed it as union bust­ing — it was a very long case.”

Robb also has pre­vi­ous con­nec­tions to the NLRB. He worked as an NLRB field attor­ney in Bal­ti­more dur­ing the late 1970s. He returned to the agency in 1982 as a staff lawyer and chief coun­sel for for­mer mem­ber Robert Hunter. As a Repub­li­can, Hunter was an impor­tant ally to then-Chair­man Don­ald Dot­son, a staunch­ly anti-union mem­ber. In 1985, Rep. Bar­ney Frank (D‑Mass.) told The Wash­ing­ton Post that Hunter had been the, ​“most loy­al sup­port­er of Don­ald Dot­son in the trans­for­ma­tion of the NLRB into a fun­da­men­tal­ly anti-union entity.”

More recent­ly, Robb’s firm harsh­ly crit­i­cized the Oba­ma-era NLRB, as cap­tured in a slideshow com­piled by Robb and Downs Rach­lin attor­ney Tim­o­thy Copeland Jr. The pre­sen­ta­tion took aim at some of the pro-labor posi­tions made by the NLRB under the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion. ​“The [Demo­c­ra­t­ic] NLRB major­i­ty con­tin­ues to nar­row­ly define NLRB super­vi­so­ry sta­tus, some­times defy­ing all com­mon sense,” one slide reads. New Repub­li­can mem­bers are ​“like­ly to agree that the Oba­ma board went too far,” the slideshow explained.

One of the deci­sions that Robb objects to is a 2014 rule that cuts back the amount of time between the fil­ing of a union­iza­tion peti­tion and the union vote to 11 days. The GOP has been attempt­ing to extend the num­ber of days to at least 35. This move would give busi­ness­es more time to con­struct a plan to stomp out union activ­i­ty, like the afore­men­tioned Domin­ion Nuclear strategy.

“The NLRB has made it clear that the intent of the new reg­u­la­tions is to run an elec­tion as quick­ly as pos­si­ble which, of course, will give the employ­er the short­est peri­od of time to respond to a union elec­tion peti­tion,” Robb and three oth­er Downs Rach­lin lawyers wrote in a 2015 advi­so­ry.

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has already qui­et­ly laid the ground­work for the NLRB to emerge as a much more busi­ness-friend­ly enti­ty. This real­i­ty was under­scored in August, when Labor Sec­re­tary Alexan­der Acos­ta announced that Ronald Rea­gan would be induct­ed into the department’s hall of fame. Trump’s pre­vi­ous NLRB nom­i­nees all have con­nec­tions to union-bust­ing, and the expect­ed nom­i­na­tion of Robb would effec­tive­ly make the NLRB — respon­si­ble for enforc­ing labor law — an anti-labor agency.