As Labor Day messages go, this one stung. In an Aug. 28 executive order, President Donald Trump directed that additional groups of federal workers would be stripped of their right to a union — federal bureaus that were left out of a similar executive order March 27.
To eliminate the union rights of federal workers, Trump is using a technicality that runs plainly against Congress’ intent. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 gave federal employees some limited union rights but it also but gave the president the power to exclude any agency or subdivision that he determines has “intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work,” as its primary function.
The March order withdrew union recognition and eliminated decades-old union contracts at dozens of federal agencies that have little or nothing to do with national security, including the Social Security Administration, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Land Management, and the Department of Agriculture.
The new order adds half a dozen other agencies to that list, including NASA, the National Weather Service, the Office of the Commissioner for Patents, and units of the Bureau of Reclamation that operate hydroelectric power plants around the country.
Since the March order, the heads of nine agencies have terminated union contracts covering more than 445,000 federal workers. The orders amount to the biggest union-busting effort in U.S. history, far more than the 175,000 public workers who lost their union rights under Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in 2010 or the 11,000 air traffic controllers who were fired fire striking by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
American Federation of Government Employees filed suit in federal court in April to block the first Trump executive order, and in June a judge issued a temporary injunction blocking it. But in July a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction, allowing the order to take effect until the lawsuit is decided in the courts.
“When those workers can’t speak up on the job and make sure their offices are serving the American people, we are all at risk,” said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler in a press statement responding to the latest order.
