Right to Work Wins Big in the Beehive State
Utah Right to Work victory: New law ends union monopoly bargaining and protects public servants' freedom to choose their own representation.
Union-Label NLRB General Counsel Gets the Boot
Rabidly Anti-Right to Work Board Member Fired the Same Day
One week after beginning his second four-year term as U.S. President, Republican Donald Trump sent an encouraging signal to National Right to Work Committee members and the many other Americans who share their view that unionism should always be fully voluntary.
On the evening of January 27, Mr. Trump emailed a communique to Jennifer Abruzzo, the radically pro-forced dues union lawyer whom Big Labor President Joe Biden and his Senate allies had installed as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) general counsel in July 2021.
The message let Ms. Abruzzo know her tenure as general counsel had come to an end.
At roughly the same time as Ms. Abruzzo was given the boot, the Trump Administration dismissed NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox, another cheerleader for Big Labor coercion of workers who had been installed on the NLRB by Mr. Biden and his cohorts in the summer of 2021.
Bureaucrats’ Firings Came After Committee Leaders Had Urged NLRB Housecleaning
A former lawyer for New York City’s Local 1199, a subsidiary of the notoriously corrupt Service Employees International Union, Ms. Wilcox had been elevated to the NLRB chairmanship by the lame-duck Biden Administration in December 2024.
On February 3, Mr. Trump terminated Jessica Rutter, a former teacher union lawyer who had been selected by Ms. Abruzzo as her deputy general counsel and who had became acting general counsel after Ms. Abruzzo’s ouster.
The Trump Administration’s rapid-fire removal of these three Big Labor cronies came about just a few weeks after two of the National Right to Work Committee’s senior legislative staffers had pressed for an NLRB housecleaning in a meeting with members of the Trump transition team involved in labor policy.
During the December 17 meeting and in a follow-up December 19 letter to the transition team, Committee Vice President Greg Mourad and Director of Federal Affairs Jace White specifically called for the immediate removal from power of Ms. Abruzzo and her second-in-command.
Mr. Mourad and Mr. White also indicated that, although firings of NLRB members for protecting union bosses who violate workers’ rights, instead of workers themselves, had not previously occurred during the Board’s nine-decade history, they should be on the table during the second Trump Administration.
Workers Were Systematically Prevented From Voting Out Unpopular Labor Unions
Mr. Mourad commented:
“Jennifer Abruzzo, Gwynne Wilcox, and Jessica Rutter deserved to be evicted from their commanding posts in large part because, under their stewardship, the NLRB general counsel’s office and the Board itself regularly refused to protect American workers’ statutory and constitutional rights.
“Take, for example, workers’ protected right under the National Labor Relations Act [NLRA] to vote out, or ‘decertify,’ existing unions that they don’t want.
“To ensure that workers have a practicable, rather than merely theoretical, right to decertify unions they oppose, the Trump NLRB reformed the agency’s ‘blocking charge’ policy in 2020 so that unions could no longer halt decertifications simply by accusing employers of unfair labor practices.
“But, practically starting from the day they took office, Ms. Abruzzo, Ms. Wilcox, and other pro-forced unionism Biden NLRB appointees did everything they could to undercut this simple and unexceptionable reform, known as the ‘election protection rule.’
“And just last year, the Biden NLRB used the rulemaking process to formalize its approval for abusive blocking charges.
“Under the policy restored by Ms. Wilcox and her cohorts, with the full approval of Ms. Abruzzo and her lieutenants, even if union bosses’ allegations against an employer are never proven, or are demonstrably false, the election is still delayed while the NLRB investigates the charges.
“The Biden NLRB’s manifest aim was to allow union bosses to remain in power even though they have provided no real evidence of employer wrongdoing, and even though independent-minded employees have gone to great lengths to secure a secret-ballot decertification vote.”
Pending Right to Work Case Defends President’s Authority To Fire NLRB Members
Because no President since the NLRA was first upheld by the Supreme Court in 1937 has ever previously sought to challenge a controversial provision that protects NLRB members from removal until their five-year terms have expired, Donald Trump’s firing of Gwynne Wilcox has especially outraged Big Labor.
Ms. Wilcox herself has filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump Administration, contending that America’s chief executive has no constitutional authority to fire policy-making members of an Executive Branch agency who are completely opposed to his policies.
President Trump’s bold move to fire Gwynne Wilcox may well have been inspired, at least in part, by a pending D.C. Circuit case brought by National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys on behalf of two Starbucks employees whose freedom to vote out an unwanted union has been trampled by the Biden NLRB.
The plaintiffs’ lead counsel in this case, Foundation staff attorney Aaron Solem, and his associates have argued the NLRB as currently structured, with unremovable, unaccountable members, is unconstitutional.
Mr. Mourad commented: “No matter how Ms. Wilcox’s legal challenge to her termination turns out, this termination will at a minimum deny a quorum to Biden NLRB holdovers while President Trump and his Senate allies have a chance to appoint and confirm a new NLRB majority.
“The next, absolutely critical step for the Trump Administration is to nominate for Ms. Wilcox’s and the two other currently vacant seats on the NLRB dedicated legal professionals who are genuinely committed to defending workers’ individual rights to the greatest extent they can under the NLRA.”
‘Pro-Worker’ and ‘Pro-Forced Unionism’ Are Not Remotely the Same Thing
Mr. Mourad continued: “Unfortunately, a small but extremely vocal Capitol Hill faction of members of President Trump’s Republican party, led by anti-Right to Work Sen. Josh Hawley [Mo.], are now advocating for Mr. Trump’s NLRB picks to be ‘friendly’ to Big Labor.
“But the reality is that the President would actually betray the 56% to 43% majority of blue-collar household voters who supported him last November if he sold out the Right to Work to make Big Labor bosses like Teamster czar Sean O’Brien happy.
“A scientific nationwide poll conducted for the Committee last year by RMG Research showed 82% of all registered voters, 80% of all working-class voters, and 79% of actively employed union members support the Right to Work principle.
“Those are the people the President must aim to please in filling the current NLRB vacancies.”
This article was originally published in our monthly newsletter. Go here to access previous newsletter posts.
To support our cause and help end forced unionism, go here to donate.
