Late-Night NLRB Shakeup Signals More Employer-Friendly Shift

President Donald Trump’s government upheaval rippled through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Monday, Jan. 27, with late-night firings of board member and former acting chair Gwynne Wilcox and general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo.

The dismissals appear to be part of a broad restructuring of the NLRB, an independent federal agency whose long-time mission statement has been to protect “the rights of private-sector employees to join together, with or without a union, to improve their wages and working conditions.”

The moves came one week after Trump named Marvin Kaplan, a board member since 2017, to be its new chair.

The NLRB, through its investigations and case decisions/resolutions, had served as an exceptionally strong ally to workers and unions over the past four years under the Democratic-leaning leadership of:

Lauren McFerran, who served two separate NLRB stints and chaired the board from Jan. 20, 2021, until her term expired on Dec. 16, 2024;
Wilcox, a board member since August 2021 who assumed the acting chair role on Dec. 17, 2024; and
Abruzzo, a longtime NLRB attorney who was appointed to a four-year term as general counsel on July 22, 2021.

With Wilcox’s firing and the term expirations of McFerran and Republican John Ring (vacated in December 2022), the typically five-person board now has just two seated members: the Republican Kaplan and Democrat David Prouty. With this number, the board cannot make any official decisions until at least one additional member is installed by the new President.

A Republican majority will likely take a more employer-friendly stance on board issues.

Unionization, working conditions and collective bargaining are topics of interest/concern to total rewards professionals since related conversations and actions typically impact benefits and compensation and strongly align with employee experience, employee recognition and workforce engagement.

The Wilcox Termination

Trump’s firing of Wilcox is contentious, to say the least. Wilcox became the first Black woman to serve on the NLRB when she was installed by then-President Joe Biden on Sept. 11, 2023. It was expected that she would be replaced as acting chair under the new Presidential administration and relegated to her previous board position. Her five-year term was to run through August 2028. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) states NLRB members can only be removed for “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

In an interview with Axios, Wilcox said she received a termination letter on Monday night from the White House, and was still processing the news the next day. “My term ends in August 2028,” she said. “I believe that I should still be able to be a board member and contribute to this country.”

Wilcox said that, in the letter, Trump wrote that the NLRB hasn’t fulfilled its responsibilities to the American people, and he believes he has the right to remove a board member.

Wilcox said she was weighing the possibility of challenging her removal.

The Supreme Court’s 1935 decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States has supported removal protections for many independent agencies — most notably, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve System’s Board of Governors. Recent lawsuits have alleged that shields against at-will removal are an unconstitutional limit on a President’s power.

The Abruzzo Termination

Trump’s removal of Abruzzo as general counsel was more expected since it was payback for Biden firing Peter Robb, Trump’s appointee to that post, on inauguration day 2021.

Biden’s action was, at that time, controversial since it marked the first time a President had removed an NLRB general counsel rather than waiting out the person’s term. Lawsuits challenged the firing. A full two years later, on Jan. 28, 2023, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled Robb’s firing was legal, citing verbiage in the NLRA.

While the labor law does mention NLRB board members may only be removed from office for neglect of duty or malfeasance, similar language is not called out with respect to the general counsel. As a result, the appellate court made clear the President had the power to fire a general counsel at will.

In a post to the NLRB website on Tuesday, Jan. 28, Abruzzo stated, “We have accomplished so much through our robust education, protection and enforcement efforts, including empowering workers to collectively seek improved wages, benefits and working conditions from their employers. There’s no putting that genie back in the bottle. So, if the agency does not fully effectuate its Congressional mandate in the future as we did during my tenure, I expect that workers, with assistance from their advocates, will take matters into their own hands in order to get well-deserved dignity and respect in the workplace, as well as a fair share of the significant value they add to their employer’s operations.”

Deputy general counsel Jessica Rutter was elevated to acting general counsel. The new administration will likely move fast to name a full-time replacement.

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