The National Labor Relations Board’s wish that its budget for fiscal year 2017 be increased over its FY 2016 budget apparently will not be granted.

According to Politico, at $274.2 million, Congress has left the NLRB’s budget unchanged from FY 2016. This is despite NLRB General Counsel Richard Griffin’s view, stated in a March 10, 2017, Memorandum to management personnel in the NLRB’s regional offices, that “years” of “flat fund[ing]” has had a “detrimental effect on the public.” Memorandum GC 17-02.

The NLRB had sought additional funding to “efficiently and effectively” process “comprehensive and complex cases” such as “nationwide efforts to improve the wages … of retail and fast food workers,” “expanded use of mandatory arbitration clauses in employment” agreements, and the expanded use of technology and social media by employees to discuss employment outside the workplace, among other things.

The spending bill also prohibits the NLRB from spending any money on issuing “any new administrative directive or regulation that would provide employees any means of voting through any electronic means in an election to determine a representative for the purposes of collective bargaining.”