Trump Ousts NLRB Leaders Who Pushed Broader Worker Rights (2)

Donald Trump is forcing out top leaders of the US labor board, ushering in a swift reboot of workplace law enforcement while testing the limits of presidential authority.

Jennifer Abruzzo, the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, said she was fired via email late on Monday. Gwynne Wilcox, who was one of the labor board’s two Democratic members, said she was ousted, too.

“As the first Black woman board member, I brought a unique perspective that I believe will be lost upon my unprecedented and illegal removal,” Wilcox said in a statement. “I will be pursuing all legal avenues to challenge my removal, which violates long-standing Supreme Court precedent.”

The NLRB is the agency responsible for enforcing most private sector US employees’ right to unionize or take collective action to improve their working conditions.

Wilcox was the NLRB’s chair for the final days of the Biden Administration and was slated to remain a labor board member until 2028. NLRB members have authority to issue regulations and rule on appeals in the cases the general counsel prosecutes. Because the US Supreme Court has ruled that the labor board needs a quorum of at least three members to be able to legally issue decisions, Wilcox’s firing leaves it unable to make rulings until a vacancy is filled.

Unlike the general counsel, federal law states that NLRB members can only be fired for neglect or malfeasance, and so terminating one could spur legal challenges to future agency rulings. Businesses, including Trump ally Elon Musk’s SpaceX, have recently argued that the restriction on firing NLRB members is unconstitutional.

In an emailed statement, a White House official described those fired as far-left appointees with radical records who don’t belong in a Trump administration.

The NLRB general counsel has sweeping authority to determine what sorts of cases are prosecuted by the agency. Trump’s NLRB general counsel during his first term, former management-side attorney Peter Robb, used that authority to turn away cases brought by Uber Technologies Inc. drivers, arguing they did not meet the criteria to be employees protected by federal labor law.

Abruzzo, one of President Joe Biden’s most hard-charging appointees, brought an unusually expansive view of workers’ legal rights. She brought cases trying to restrict companies from banning “Black Lives Matter” insignia, imposing
noncompete clauses and
holding mandatory anti-union meetings. Her approach drew criticism from business groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, which accused her of “blatantly unlawful overreach.”

The firings are among the latest efforts by Trump to remove top federal officials since taking office about a week ago. In that time he has dismissed several independent inspectors general at various federal agencies as well as prosecutors associated with an independent counsel probe into his actions during and after his first term.

Clears Way

While Abruzzo’s term was slated to last until July, her ouster by Trump was widely expected following Biden’s firing of Robb on Inauguration Day four years ago. The move clears the way for the new president to install a top NLRB attorney who may take a much more business-friendly approach to the role. Trump’s choice could determine what happens to the agency’s efforts to hold Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. liable for the treatment of subcontracted staff who the companies claim are not their employees.

Firing Wilcox was less expected, particularly given that there were already enough vacant seats on the board for Trump to install a Republican majority in the coming months. More management-friendly board members could overturn Biden-era precedents that made it easier to unionize and harder to fire protesting workers.

Trump argued on the campaign trail that he would be a better friend to union members than Biden. His pick to lead the Department of Labor, Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer, is an unusually pro-union Republican former member of Congress whose candidacy was pushed by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

But the Labor Department is a separate agency from the NLRB. During Trump’s first term, he filled key roles at both agencies with business allies who pushed changes giving companies more power over workers. And while campaigning last year, he praised the idea of his ally Elon Musk axing workers who went on strike. The president of the AFL-CIO said this month that the union federation has been readying “rapid response” plans to defend immigrant workers and federal government employees from attacks by the Trump administration.

Over her three and a half years on the job, Abruzzo prosecuted complaints against a slew of prominent US employers, including Starbucks Corp., Apple Inc., Tesla Inc., the New York Times Co., and the National Collegiate Athletics Association, which she accused of illegally misclassifying college athletes as non-employees. This month she issued a complaint against private prison company GEO Group Inc. alleging it used solitary confinement to retaliate against immigrant detainees who supported labor strikes. (The organizations have denied wrongdoing.)

A settlement she secured with Amazon, requiring the e-retailer to allow employees to organize in its breakrooms during their time off, helped make possible the first-ever unionization of one of the company’s US warehouses.

“I think we’ve done a really nice job of educating and empowering workers to speak up, to seek dignity and respect in their workplaces,” Abruzzo said in a November interview following Trump’s victory. “And I don’t think that they’re going to back down.”

If the agency does not effectively enforce employees’ rights, Abruzzo said, more workers could resort to other tactics such as lawful or unlawful strikes. “I think workers are going to take matters into their own hands,” she said.

(Updates with White House comment, additional context throughout.)

To contact the author of this story:
Josh Eidelson in San Francisco at jeidelson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Anne Cronin at acronin14@bloomberg.net

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