President Trump directed a large number of government agencies to end collective bargaining with federal unions on Thursday, a major escalation of his efforts to more control over the federal labor force.
Mr. Trump is crucial to protecting national security. However, it targets government agencies, including the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, the State, Treasury and Energy, most Justice Departments as well as parts of the Department of Commerce, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services.
The United States' Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal workers union, estimates that the order will deprive labor protection from hundreds of thousands of civil servants and says legal proceedings are being prepared.
“This administration's bullying strategy poses a clear threat not only to federal employees and their unions, but to every American who values democracy and freedom of speech and associations,” union president Everett Kelley said in a statement. “The threat Trump has made to unions and workers across the United States is clear: in trouble or otherwise.”
Unions have been a major obstacle to Mr. Trump’s efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce and reshape the administration to keep it directly under his control. They have repeatedly sued his administrative actions for a blizzard, winning at least temporary remarks from some fired federal workers and preventing efforts to remove parts of the government.
In order to demand the cancellation of the power to cancel union contracts under the Public Reform Act of 1978, Mr. Trump expanded the provisions of the law for national security reasons. In doing so, he adopted a broad national security perspective, which includes agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission.
The United Government Employees Federation said Mr. Trump's order was illegal.
After Mr. Trump signed the order, the affected agencies filed a lawsuit in Texas on Thursday against a union representing federal employees in an attempt to cancel their collective bargaining agreement.
The government argued that the agreement “significantly restricts” the executive branch and hindered the president’s efforts to protect the United States from foreign and domestic threats.” In the filing, the administration argued that the Biden administration extended the labor agreement for five years shortly after Trump won the election in November. The government has also raised concerns about the contract's return to work policy.
The executive order is the latest step in Mr. Trump's overall effort to overhaul the federal bureaucracy, and he assigned Elon Musk and his government departments to oversee efficiency. Mr Musk said in an interview aired on Thursday on Fox News that he tried to reduce the federal deficit by $1 trillion and cut $4 billion a day.
Federal workers are already preparing for major new cuts. Mr. Trump signed An executive order aimed at demolishing the education sector, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
