President dismisses Biden-appointed chair of Federal Labor Relations Authority to advance ‘America-First agenda’. Donald Trump has fired a top official at the independent agency responsible for labor relations with the federal government. Susan Tsui Grundmann, one of three board members at the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), has been dismissed, a White House official told the Guardian. She served as the agency’s chair.
Trump is “committed to building a team fully committed to advancing his America-First agenda”, the White House official said. Her profile page on the agency’s website has already been removed, and an organizational chart of its leadership states that the chair role is now vacant. Tsui Grudmann’s firing was first revealed by a Washington Post reporter on social media. The FLRA is responsible for overseeing management and labor relations for some 2.1 million federal employees. Tsui Grundmann was nominated to its board by Joe Biden in 2021, and approved by the Senate in 2022, before her designation as chair in 2023. Her term was set to end on 1 July.
Trump has already been sued after firing a board member of the National Labor Relations Board, Gwynne Wilcox, last week. Wilcox has argued that the president only has authority to remove board members for negligence or misconduct, which were not alleged by the Trump administration during her termination. In 1935 the US supreme court ruled in Humphrey’s Executor v United States that the US constitution did not grant “illimitable power of removal” to the president.
The FLRA has identical stipulations, with a statute that states a president can remove a member “only upon notice and hearing and only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office”. The FLRA was contacted for comment. As chair, Tsui Grundmann argued against stagnant funding and understaffing at the agency amid increases in unfair labor practice charge filings, saying the agency would have to engage in furloughs if funding remained flat.
Last year, Biden nominated Colleen Duffy Kiko and Anne Wagner to serve on the three-member board. Duffy Kiko had previously served as a Republican appointee to the board under Trump. Wagner is a former counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees. Send us a tip. If you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs or the federal workforce, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761.
