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jennifer abruzzo
'The Oligarchy Is Thrilled': Trump Removes NLRB General Counsel and Democratic Board Member
"I will be pursuing all legal avenues to challenge my removal, which violates long-standing Supreme Court precedent," NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox said.
Jan 28, 2025
In a radical shake-up of the federal agency tasked with protecting the right of private sector employees to organize, U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday fired two key leaders at the National Labor Relations Board.
Trump ousted NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo and—in a less expected and legally dubious move—also removed Democratic NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox.
Wilcox's position is protected by federal law which states that board members can only be fired for neglect or malfeasance, perBloomberg.
The firm SpaceX, which was founded by Elon Musk, has challenged the protections shielding NLRB members from being removed, arguing they are unconstitutional. Other companies, such as Trader Joe's and Amazon, have also challenged the constitutionality of the agency. Washington Post reporter Lauren Kaori Gurley remarked that Wilcox's "unprecedented" firing "could bring cases filed by SpaceX, Amazon challenging NLRB constitutionality" to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Abruzzo was generally considered one of the most union-friendly figures to serve as general counsel in recent decades.
After being tapped as the board's lead prosecutor by then-President Biden in 2021, Abruzzo prosecuted complaints against companies like Starbucks, Amazon and Tesla, and under her leadership the board adopted a more worker-friendly framework for determining when companies must bargain with unions without an election.
Whoever takes over as NLRB general counsel, which during Trump's first term was former management-side labor lawyer Peter Robb, will have discretion over which sorts of cases the agency prosecutes.
Abruzzo's tenure was due to last until July, though her firing by Trump was widely expected. She did not, however, preemptively leave her post, which drew praise from one observer.
"Not unexpected, but I'm glad that Abruzzo didn't roll over but instead forced Trump, the supposed champion of working people, to fire the most pro-union government official since Frances Perkins. Let him own it," wrote reporter Jordan Zakarin on X.
Basel Musharbash, an antitrust and trade regulation lawyer, compared Abruzzo to the leaders of the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Biden.
"Jennifer Abruzzo was in the same league as Lina Khan, Jonathan Kanter, and Rohit Chopra—dusting off labor laws that have been sitting on the shelf for decades to protect and empower workers," Musharbash said. "Trump shouldn't have fired her—he should've reappointed her."
Wilcox's dismissal was less expected, especially given that there were enough vacant seats on the board to allow Trump to nominate a Republican majority, according to Bloomberg. The board is now without a quorum and can no longer issue decisions.
Wilcox was appointed to the NLRB in 2021 and was reconfirmed by the Senate for a second term in 2023. That term was slated to last through 2028. She is also a previous chair of the board.
"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 to Bloomberg. "I will be pursuing all legal avenues to challenge my removal, which violates long-standing Supreme Court precedent."
One organizer in Brooklyn remarked, "The oligarchy is thrilled with this move."
Jeff Hauser, head of Revolving Door Project on X, wrote on X that "this is 100% different than Abruzzo. Trump firing Abruzzo is substantively evil, but he is the president of, by, and for the bosses and has that power. Firing Wilcox is a constitutional crisis!"
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NLRB Head Says Corporate Union-Busters Want to Distract Public With Legal Challenges
"These esoteric arguments came about why?" said National Labor Relations Board Chief Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. "Because we dared to issue a complaint against SpaceX after it unlawfully fired eight workers."
Apr 10, 2024
Amid an ongoing nationwide surge in union organizing across numerous industries in the U.S., powerful corporations in recent months have argued the federal watchdog tasked with ensuring fair labor practices is, itself, unconstitutional—but the nation's top labor lawyer said Tuesday she doesn't buy the claims of Amazon, Trader Joe's, and other companies.
The "deep-pocketed, low-road employers want to divert [the National Labor Relations Board's] sparse resources to defending ourselves in court," NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo said at a virtual event, "to slow down or prevent us from engaging in concerted action. They're just trying to stop our enforcement actions."
Abruzzo spoke at a webinar titled "Preserving the Administrative State: Threats to Administrative Law Enforcement in the Courts," hosted by the left-leaning think tank Roosevelt Institute.
Watch the event below:
The event was held just over three months after SpaceX, billionaire enterpreneur Elon Musk's space exploration company, filed a complaint against the NLRB after the board accused it of unlawfully firing eight employees. SpaceX claimed that a "constitutionally required degree of control is lacking" at the agency because its judges and five board members cannot immediately be dismissed by a president.
In moves Abruzzo on Tuesday called "jumping on the bandwagon," an attorney for Trader Joe's argued at a hearing weeks later that the "structure and organization" of the NLRB is unconstitutional, and Amazon made a similar claim in February. Starbucks said in its own legal filing that the limitation on removing NLRB judges and members "frustrates the presidential control Article II [of the U.S. Constitution] demands."
"These esoteric arguments came about why?" said Abruzzo. "Because we dared to issue a complaint against SpaceX after it unlawfully fired eight workers for speaking about their workplace concerns. And then Amazon jumps on the bandwagon, Starbucks jumps on the bandwagon, Trader Joe's, others get in on the action just because we're trying to hold them accountable for repeatedly violating workers rights to organize and collectively bargain through representatives of their free choosing."
All the companies have been accused by the board's prosecutors of violating labor law—a fact that Abruzzo said the corporations are eager for the public to forget.
A key goal of the legal filings is to "to divert attention away from the fact that they are actually lawbreakers who need to be held accountable in a timely manner," Abruzzo said at the Roosevelt Institute webinar. "And frankly, that strategy is working. There's a lot of public reporting about the challenges as opposed to the law-breaking."
In addition to SpaceX's alleged illegal firing of workers, the companies have been accused of retaliating against employees, limiting workers' access to a warehouse, and closing store locations to discourage union activity, among other violations.
NLRB judges have already ruled against Starbucks, Amazon, and Trader Joe's in several workers' rights cases.
Two of the companies—SpaceX and Amazon—were founded by the two richest men in the United States, Musk and Jeff Bezos.
"Once billionaires are scared of the power of the NLRB, they bring in the big guns," Diana Reddy, a labor law professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, said at the Roosevelt Institute event.
Abruzzo said courts are likely to reject the companies' claims, noting the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the organizational structure of the NLRB in 1937.
Other federal agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Securities and Exchange Commission, have also been challenged as unconstitutional by corporate interests. Rulings in those cases are expecting in the coming months.
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After the Latest NLRB Ruling, Unions Must Stomp on the Accelerator
The conditions for the labor movement to organize millions of new workers are much better than usual, but we have yet to see the tangible evidence that the institutions of the union world are using this opportunity to leap into action.
Aug 30, 2023
The happy times are here at the National Labor Relations Board. The agency, which has been the brightest beam of sunshine in the Biden administration’s stormy attempts to empower organized labor, passed down a decision last week that could make it meaningfully easier to organize unions—potentially the first of a wave of pro-union decisions that could be coming before the end of Biden’s term. It’s nice to have the government on our side, for once. But these rulings are only one brick in an entire wall of power that the labor movement needs to build, before all of the gains we’re celebrating now get swept away.
Last week’s NLRB decision in a case known as Cemex should go a long way towards disincentivizing companies from illegal union busting tactics. The new rule says that when the majority of a company’s employees sign union cards and ask for recognition, the company must either recognize the union, or file a petition requesting a formal election within two weeks. In a crucial change, though, “if an employer who seeks an election commits any unfair labor practice that would require setting aside the election, the petition will be dismissed, and—rather than re-running the election—the Board will order the employer to recognize and bargain with the union.”
Currently, the employer playbook is to deny recognition, stall for as long as possible before the formal election, and use the time in between to lie and intimidate and harass workers so much that they decide to vote “no.” Employers routinely use illegal tactics during that union busting period (think Starbucks firing workers and closing stores when they try to organize), because they know that any unfair labor practice (ULP) charges will take months or years to be litigated, and carry paltry penalties. Now, even if companies do demand a formal election, they will have to think very carefully about staying within the bounds of the law when they recite their trite anti-union talking points, because if they commit any serious ULPs, they could be automatically forced to recognize and bargain with the union.
Jennifer Abruzzo and the NLRB are proving to be the single best reason for the left to support Joe Biden.
This is something. It’s not a panacea, but it’s a step. It should make the grossest abuses by major companies less common. It shifts the onus for obeying existing labor law further onto the employer, rather than forcing unions to act as cops and prosecutors and spend years pursuing a slew of ULPs, which won’t be decided until long after they have served their purpose of preventing a successful union drive. The new standard won’t stop all the highly paid anti-union consultants from writing outrageously misleading scripts about the horrors of unions that workers will have to sit through, but it should begin to change the fact that it has long been rational for employers to break these laws, because the downside for doing so was so small.
In coming weeks, we could also see the NLRB issue several more decisions that could expand the speech rights of workers, empower strikes, and restrict the scope of “management rights” provisions that companies use to do whatever they want. Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB’s general counsel, is pushing as hard as possible to fully transform America’s existing suite of regulations into one that helps workers organize, rather than hinders them. It remains to be seen how much of her vision will become a reality, but Abruzzo and the NLRB are proving to be the single best reason for the left to support Joe Biden.
After being beaten down (or, in the best of times, just ignored) by U.S. presidents and their regulators for 50 years, unions are prone to exulting at small gains. That can cause them to lapse into satisfied rest when they should instead be stomping on the accelerator. For the sake of maintaining a proper perspective, let me pull back here to articulate the full context of this nice NLRB decision. Cemex may dissuade the next Starbucks or Amazon-type employer from wantonly firing organizers and telling outright lies—or it may not, because if an employer fears that they will lose the union vote, and the penalty for grotesque ULPs is simply to be forced to accept having a union anyhow, they may reason that it’s still worth breaking the law, because they would end up with a union either way. The limitations of even these better regulations point to the need for harsh financial penalties for illegal union busting, and for a rule that would force companies into arbitration if they stall and refuse to bargain a first contract.
Getting that sort of really meaningful labor law reform would take something like passing the PRO Act. That won’t happen as long as the filibuster exists. Until all the Democrats (including Biden!) who claim to be union friendly are ready to scrap the filibuster, it’s a useless dream. Furthermore, as soon as the next Republican president is elected, you can rest assured that the NLRB will be turned into an agency dedicated to rolling back every single helpful reform that Abruzzo is now working to pass. And—more important than any of this—even with a pandemic that radicalized millions of workers, historically high public popularity of unions, and the most pro-union president in our lifetimes, union density has continued to go down every year.
The wind is at our backs. But the ship still isn’t going anywhere.
Celebrate this marginal regulatory improvement, sure. Be happy we have a good rather than a bad NLRB, and a president whose instinct is to assist rather than crush organized labor. But do not for a second think that we have won anything yet. The conditions for the labor movement to organize millions of new workers and truly shift America’s balance of power towards working people are much better than usual, but we have yet to see the tangible evidence that the institutions of the union world are using this opportunity to leap into action and pour resources into organizing, rather than watching their bank accounts swell as the percentage of workers in unions shrinks.
The Democratic Party is a transactional partner to labor. It will only help us to the extent that we are strong enough to push it to do so. Joe Biden does not pass out union cards. The NLRB does not organize workers. Only the labor movement can do that. Sometimes, like now, the government offers us a small step up. It won’t mean much for the world unless we take it as a signal to start running.
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