The President of the Working Class

Sean O’Brien must be so excited today!

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 general counsel has sweeping authority to determine what sorts of cases are prosecuted by the agency, which is responsible for enforcing most private sector US employees’ right to unionize or take collective action to improve their working conditions. 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.”

When the Teamsters get crushed by the new NLRB, I’m sure O’Brien will so good as a white man.