Labor News & Commentary March 9 two reversals in the Trump administration's firing of federal labor employees

[Omaha Steve]

https://onlabor.org/march-9-2025/

By Gilbert Placeres

Gilbert Placeres is a student at Harvard Law School.

In today’s News & Commentary, two reversals in the Trump administration’s firing of federal labor employees as a judge orders the reinstatement of NLRB Board Member Gwynne Wilcox and the Department of Labor reinstates about 120 employees who were facing termination.

On Thursday, a federal district court judge ordered the reinstatement of NLRB Board Member Gwynne Wilcox, whom President Trump had fired in the first day of his second term. Divya covered the oral arguments in the case last week. In her ruling, Judge Beryl Howell wrote that “the President does not have the authority to terminate members of the National Labor Relations Board at will, and his attempt to fire [Wilcox] from her position on the Board was a blatant violation of the law,” as well as that “an American president is not a king.” The Trump administration has already filed an appeal in the case.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) announced Friday that about 120 probationary employees in the Department of Labor had been reinstated immediately and told to report back to duty on Monday. The Labor Department employees were reinstated a day after U.S. President Donald Trump told his cabinet members that they, not Elon Musk, had the final say on staffing and policy at their agencies. He also told cabinet members to approach workforce cuts with a “scalpel” instead of a “hatchet.”