Every administration picks its own staff and makes its own appointments, but a hallmark of Trump’s second term so far has been an effort to fire board members at independent federal agencies that Congress set up with staggered terms of office to insulate from political shifts. Examples include the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. But the independent agency most important to the labor movement is the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
The NLRB is responsible for protecting private sector workers’ rights to form unions, strike, and take other collective action. It holds workplace elections when workers want to certify or decertify a union, and it investigates labor law violations known as unfair labor practices. Union leaders know it as a chronically understaffed agency that has little enforcement power, and takes years to resolve employer violations.
But no individual for generations did more to reform the NLRB than Biden’s appointee as general counsel of the NLRB, Jennifer Abruzzo.
On Jan. 28, the Trump administration fired her. The same email fired NLRB Board member Gwynne Wilcox. But Wilcox’ congressionally mandated term doesn’t end until August 2028.
No president before Trump had ever attempted to remove an NLRB member. Section 3(a) of the National Labor Relations Act prohibits presidents from removing NLRB members except for “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause,” and only “upon notice and hearing.”
Wilcox filed suit Feb. 5 in federal court to contest the firing, and the case is pending.
But for now, Wilcox’ removal from the board reduces the five-seat NLRB to just two members. That’s one short of the three-member quorum required under a 2010 Supreme Court ruling.
When the NLRB lacks a quorum, it cannot issue decisions, causing cases to stall indefinitely. That’s bad because it leaves unfair labor practices un-remedied. But it also means that Abruzzo-era precedents stand until a quorum exists.
