President Biden has fired the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) after he refused to step down.
Biden asked Peter Robb, a Trump appointee, to resign on Wednesday. He refused to resign and was fired later that day, a White House spokesman confirmed to The Hill.
Robb was sworn in in November 2017 for a four-year term expected to end in November. NLRB is an independent bureau that is managed by a five-member board and a general counsel.
In a letter to the White House obtained by Bloomberg Law, Robb said he would not step down and that his resignation would “permanently undermine” the work of the agency.
“I respectfully refuse to step down from my four-year term as General Counsel of NLRB less than 10 months before my term expires,” wrote Robb.
The NLRB website states that Robb’s “duty period”, which began on November 11, 2017, ended on Wednesday.
Biden’s choice of the next NLRB adviser will have to be confirmed by the Senate, and the Democratic choice would work with the current board of one Democrat and three Republicans, with one vacancy.
A general adviser to the NLRB has not been asked to resign since 1950, when President Truman filed for Robert Denham’s resignation over an anti-union law, Bloomberg Law reported.
Representative Virginia Foxx (NC), the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, criticized Biden on Wednesday for calling for Robb’s resignation, saying that his calls for unity and civil discourse “already turn out to be empty aspirations.”
“The Biden government appears to be rewarding their friends in Big Labor on day one for this inappropriate demand that NLRB General Counsel Robb resign immediately or be forcibly removed,” Foxx said in a statement.
Biden has now selected Lauren McFerran as chairman of NLRB. McFerran had served on the board since December 2014 and was confirmed in July for another term ending December 2024.