Trump is decimating federal employee unions one step at a time – NPR

Politics

How Trump is decimating federal employee unions one step at a time

September 1, 20255:00 AM ET, By Andrea Hsu 4-Minute Listen Transcript

Sharda Fornnarino got the news in early August.

The Department of Veterans Affairs was ending nearly all of its collective bargaining agreements. The agency gave labor unions just days to get out of federal buildings.

“We went in on the weekend, and we emptied our office space,” says Fornnarino, an outpatient surgery nurse at the Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center outside Denver, where she’s also local director for National Nurses United.

Federal employees have had the right to join unions and collectively bargain over working conditions since the 1960s. Unlike private sector workers, government employees cannot negotiate wages or strike. But through collective bargaining, they do help shape disciplinary procedures, parental leave policies, how overtime is managed and much more.

Giving workers a say in workplace policies, the thinking goes, leads to less friction in the workplace and more effective government.

But President Trump has abandoned that idea. Instead, he’s argued that federal employee unions pose a danger to the country. In March, he issued an executive order ending collective bargaining rights for more than one million federal workers at about 20 federal agencies. Almost immediately, many agencies halted automatic deductions of union dues from employee paychecks, cutting off a critical source of cash flow to the unions. Just ahead of Labor Day, Trump issued a new executive order, adding about a half dozen agencies to the list.

Unions have filed lawsuits, alleging Trump is retaliating against them for opposing parts of his agenda. Lower courts temporarily halted the March order; the government appealed.

Two appeals courts then said the Trump administration could move forward while litigation continues, citing the president’s unique responsibility for protecting national security. In their rulings, the judges noted that the Trump administration had told agencies not to terminate collective bargaining agreements while litigation was pending.

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