Poll Question: If Trump Wins, Will He Fire The NLRB's General Counsel On Day One?
NLRB General Counsel Abruzzo's legal arguments defending a President's ability to fire a GC may, ironically, be her undoing.
By Peter List, Editor | October 21, 2024
Background: Last week, I was asked to provide some prognostications on different “what if” scenarios based on what could happen based on political outcomes.
Although the presentation was mostly apolitical, part of the problem with so much intense partisanship is the broad pendulum swings that take place whenever control of the administration of government switches parties.
While the presentation to the audience focused on bigger-picture “what-ifs,” one thing that I mentioned in passing is the possibility that, in the unlikely event1 that Donald Trump wins the election, he could fire National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo on Day One (Inauguration Day), just as Joe Biden fired Abruzzo’s predecessor Peter Robb on Inauguration Day in 2021.
Ironically, if Trump were to win and subsequently fire Abruzzo, Abruzzo’s own legal arguments that the President of the United States can fire NLRB General Counsels may hamstring any arguments to stop her firing.
“A unanimous three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said federal labor law only shields the five members of the board from being removed at will and not the general counsel, who acts as a prosecutor,” Bloomberg reported last year.
Though the the US Supreme Court remanded the matter back down to the Fifth Circuit for reconsideration in light of the recent end to the Chevron doctrine, the firing was also affirmed by the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit as recently as August.
So, presuming the General Counsel’s position is not shielded from being fired “at will” (thanks to GC Abruzzo’s own arguments), the question posed is whether (in the off chance President Trump wins the election) Trump will a) fire GC Abruzzo on Day One, or b) he will wait, or c) not fire her at all.
What do you think?
As of today, although polls indicate the presidential race may be close—even giving Trump a slight advantage in battleground states—they do not factor in the parties’ Get Out The Vote (GOTV) efforts (or lack thereof).
“We don’t really believe the polls,” Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of Nevada’s Culinary Local 226 told The American Prospect. “Trump’s people generally under-poll, and if we had an election today, I think Trump wins.”
“But it’s not today,” he continued. “We’ve got three weeks to go and the Culinary army is out there, going to knock on hundreds of thousands of doors and talk to hundreds of thousands of people.”
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