Trump Moves to End Federal Union Protections Across Government
Posted on: Mar 28, 2025 11:05 IST | Posted by: Nytimes
An executive order signed by the president would cancel collective bargaining for hundreds of thousands of workers, the largest federal employees union said. The union was preparing legal action.
Reporting from Washington
President Trump instructed a broad swath of government agencies on Thursday to end collective bargaining with federal unions, a major escalation in his effort to assert more control over the federal work force.
Mr. Trump framed the order as critical to protect national security. But it targets agencies across the government, including the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, State, Treasury and Energy, most of the Justice Department, and parts of the Departments of Commerce, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services.
The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal workers union, estimated that the order would strip labor protections from hundreds of thousands of civil servants, and said it was preparing legal action.
“This administration’s bullying tactics represent a clear threat not just to federal employees and their unions, but to every American who values democracy and the freedoms of speech and association,” Everett Kelley, the union’s president, said in a statement. “Trump’s threat to unions and working people across America is clear: fall in line or else.”
Unions have been a major obstacle in Mr. Trump’s effort to slash the size of the federal work force and reshape the government to put it more directly under his control. They have repeatedly sued over his blizzard of executive actions, winning at least temporary reprieves for some fired federal workers and blocking efforts to dismantle portions of the government.
To claim authority to cancel the union contracts under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, Mr. Trump expanded the list of agencies exempt from provisions of laws governing federal labor relations for national security reasons. In doing so, he adopted an expansive view of national security, one that encompasses agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission.
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