Andrea Hsu
Andrea Hsu is NPR's labor and workplace correspondent.
Hsu first joined NPR in 2002 and spent nearly two decades as a producer for All Things Considered. Through interviews and in-depth series, she's covered topics ranging from America's opioid epidemic to emerging research at the intersection of music and the brain. She led the award-winning NPR team that happened to be in Sichuan Province, China, when a massive earthquake struck in 2008. In the coronavirus pandemic, she reported a series of stories on the pandemic's uneven toll on women, capturing the angst that women and especially mothers were experiencing across the country, alone. Hsu came to NPR via National Geographic, the BBC, and the long-shuttered Jumping Cow Coffee House.
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Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson has called his agency's rule banning noncompetes unconstitutional. Still, he says protecting workers against noncompetes remains a priority.
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The Trump administration's plans to convert some 50,000 civil servants into at-will employees has some worried that essential government functions will be politicized. -
As part of Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill," the House voted to end a retirement supplement aimed at helping federal employees who retire before they're 62. -
President Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" making its way through Congress includes a significant cut to federal employees' retirement benefits.
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The Trump administration has tried firing people, dismantling agencies and inviting people to quit. Lawsuits have blocked some of those efforts. -
Commerce Department employees who were fired, reinstated, and fired again learned belatedly that their health insurance has been cut off. Some had already racked up thousands in medical bills. -
More than a thousand people who worked to keep American agriculture free of pests and disease have left the federal workforce in President Trump's massive government downsizing. -
There are growing concerns that President Trump's depletion of the federal workforce is putting America's farms at risk, which could lead to higher food prices and hurdles for farm exports.
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In her order, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said the president may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without approval from Congress. -
Cathy Harris and Gwynne Wilcox, Democratic board members of independent agencies, argue that President Trump lacked the authority to fire them, citing federal law and Supreme Court precedent.
