The White House ramped up its attacks on federal labor unions Thursday by trying to strip away collective bargaining rights from a large chunk of the government workforce.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring a slew of agencies ineligible for negotiating union contracts because they have intelligence or national security work as a “primary function.”
The order claims the exemption covers the State, Defense, Treasury, Justice and Veterans Affairs departments, along with large portions of the Interior, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services departments, and several other federal agencies.
If the policy survives a likely legal challenge, employees at the relevant agencies would no longer be covered by union contracts, losing a key barrier against unfair firings.
The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union, said the order covers more than a million workers.
“President Trump’s latest executive order is a disgraceful and retaliatory attack on the rights of hundreds of thousands of patriotic American civil servants.”
– Everett Kelley, president, AFGE
HuffPost reported back in December that Trump was likely to use a national security exemption to try to end collective bargaining rights at several departments. The president has already revoked union rights at the Transportation Security Administration, where it’s easier to do so due to the law that created the agency.
AFGE said it was preparing “immediate legal action” to fight the policy.
“President Trump’s latest executive order is a disgraceful and retaliatory attack on the rights of hundreds of thousands of patriotic American civil servants — nearly one-third of whom are veterans — simply because they are members of a union that stands up to his harmful policies,” said Everett Kelley, the union’s president.
Although they can offer strong job security, federal unions do not wield the same powers as their private-sector counterparts. They can’t bargain over wages or benefits or call work stoppages, for instance. And all federal workplaces are “open shops,” meaning no worker can be required to pay union dues under the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act.
Nonetheless, the Trump administration sees federal unions as a major obstacle to its goals of shrinking the government and shuttering agencies it doesn’t like. AFGE and other unions have led a number of lawsuits aimed at blocking legally dubious White House policies, including its “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation offer and its sweeping layoffs of more than 20,000 probationary employees.
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Kelley said Trump’s efforts to weaken unions amount to a threat to all workers: “Fall in line or else.”