DOJ Attorney Battles Biden Admin Union Power Grab Over Justice Department
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Foundation attorneys challenge last minute DOJ unionization in violation of FLRA case law
NTEU union bosses backed Kamala Harris for President, but when voters rejected her, NTEU union officials and the Biden-Harris Administration hastily moved to install the union at the DOJ in an apparent attempt to obstruct Trump’s priorities.
WASHINGTON, DC – In states across the country, union officials go to great lengths to gain more political influence, and will often violate established law to do so.
As veteran Department of Justice attorney Jeffrey Morrison is discovering, federal agencies are no exception. Morrison is challenging a last-minute attempt by National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) bosses to gain monopoly bargaining control over attorneys at both the DOJ Civil Rights Division (CRT, where Morrison is employed) and the DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD).
The unionization campaign was fast-tracked just days after Trump’s November election victory, in an apparent attempt to formally hand NTEU union officials power over the divisions prior to inauguration day. Morrison’s legal action asks the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) to formally review the actions by the Biden DOJ and NTEU officials. The FLRA is the federal agency responsible for adjudicating disputes between federal employees, union officials, and agencies within the federal government.
Brief: DOJ Holdovers and NTEU Bosses Colluded to Flout Existing Law
Morrison, who is receiving free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, contends in filings before the FLRA that the NTEU’s scheme violates an existing FLRA decision in which the agency ruled that CRT attorneys did not comprise a work unit appropriate for unionization.
DOJ management raised this exact concern about the CRT unit with the FLRA after NTEU union bosses began their campaign, but the DOJ dropped its opposition just days after the November federal elections.
Morrison is asking the FLRA to review the decision of the Regional Director to allow the election to go forward in the CRT and ENRD divisions without properly considering if these divisions are an appropriate unit under the law.
Morrison’s filings (called “Applications for Review”) came after DOJ management and NTEU union officials agreed that the CRT and ENRD were work units appropriate for unionization. His Applications for Review point out that a prior FLRA decision, Antitrust Division, held that CRT lawyers “did not have a separate and distinct community of interest from other DOJ trial attorneys” and for that reason couldn’t stand as a distinct bargaining unit.
“[T]he Authority determined this very unit to not be an appropriate unit…The Regional Director’s failure to comply with current, binding Authority precedent is in error and must be reversed,” the Application for Review says regarding the CRT attorneys. This same argument is applied to the ENRD division because it is similarly situated to CRT in the DOJ hierarchy.
FLRA Failed to Conduct Investigation Into NTEU’s Union Scheme
Morrison’s applications also contend that the FLRA “fail[ed] to conduct an independent investigation into the appropriateness of the unit,” despite the law requiring that the FLRA make such a finding.
“An agency agreeing with a union that a unit is appropriate does not mean that unit is actually appropriate. Agencies, like DOJ here, cannot usurp the Authority’s role in deciding unit appropriateness…” say the Applications for Review.
“Right before power changed hands in Washington, DC, NTEU union bosses and DOJ bureaucrats appear to have colluded to flout longstanding precedent that says Justice Department attorneys cannot legally be unionized division by division,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix.
“The FLRA has ignored established precedent to let this hasty unionization attempt go through, and our attorneys are proud to assist Mr. Morrison in opposing this maneuver.”
Following Foundation Legal Arguments, Trump Fires Biden-Appointed NLRB Bureaucrats
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Foundation constitutional lawsuit first to argue presidents can remove Board members
President Trump appears intent on ending union bosses’ reign at the NLRB. One of his first actions was to axe Jennifer Abruzzo and Gwynne Wilcox, both ex-union bosses who constantly sought to beef up their cronies’ powers over employees.
WASHINGTON, DC – Joe Biden, a career lackey of Big Labor union bosses, spared no moment of his administration ensuring that his cronies at the top of America’s largest unions gained power at the expense of independent-minded workers.
Only minutes after being inaugurated in 2021, he began setting the stage for a Big Labor takeover of the federal government: He immediately fired Peter Robb, the general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) during Donald Trump’s first term. With Robb gone, Biden’s acting general counsel quickly quashed multiple National Right to Work Foundation-backed cases that would have otherwise received full NLRB consideration. When Biden filled the general counsel position, he picked Jennifer Abruzzo — a radical ex-Communications Workers of America (CWA) lawyer who was confirmed only because then-Vice President Kamala Harris broke a party-line deadlock in the Senate.
And Biden wasn’t finished. He filled two vacancies on the Board itself with Gwynne Wilcox and David Prouty — who had both worked for the radical Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Biden’s crusade against worker freedom arguably culminated in the disastrous Cemex Construction Materials Pacific NLRB decision, which gave union officials the power to seize monopoly bargaining power in a workplace without winning a secret-ballot election among employees. The Biden Board also repealed key Foundation-backed reforms that (among other things) stopped union bosses from using so-called “blocking charges” alleging employer malfeasance to stop workers from voting in union removal elections they had requested.
Sudden End of Radical Biden Majority Creates Opportunities for Foundation Litigation
But, just a week after re-ascending to the White House, President Trump took immediate action to undo the damage to worker freedom caused by the historically-radical Biden NLRB. In late January, Trump took the crucial step of giving both Abruzzo and Wilcox the boot. That, combined with the fact that the Senate did not confirm Biden NLRB Chairman Lauren McFerran for another term, means Trump has the opportunity to appoint a pro-freedom majority to the Board before it considers any other cases.
“We hope that this signals the opening of a new chapter at the NLRB, where the agency will fulfill its statutory mandate to protect workers’ right to associate with unions if they choose, but will equally defend their right to refrain from all union activity,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix.
Trump Admin, Others Follow Foundation Lead in Arguing for Structural Board Change
By removing Wilcox, the Trump Administration is relying on arguments made in the Foundation’s groundbreaking cases challenging the structure of the NLRB. Foundation-backed Starbucks employees Ariana Cortes and Logan Karam filed the first-ever federal suit arguing that, as per the Constitution’s separation of powers principles, the president should be able to remove them at-will.
Cortes and Karam’s suit is currently pending at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Big Labor backers argue that board members like Wilcox have statutory protections that make them removable only in certain circumstances. But Board member protections are constitutionally questionable.
“President Trump made an excellent and decisive move to protect the freedom of American workers. Abruzzo’s and Wilcox’s track records were devastating for independent-minded employees,” observed Mix.
“We’re also encouraged by the Trump Administration’s apparent reliance on National Right to Work Foundation-backed workers’ cases to affirm the idea that NLRB members — like Wilcox — should be removable by the president at will. “The Foundation still has considerable legal work to do to reverse the damage done by the Biden NLRB, and removing a union partisan like Wilcox from the Board is just the first step towards restoring the rights and freedoms of workers opposed to union affiliation,” added Mix.
