A federal judge ruled Friday to temporarily prevent President Donald Trump from stopping collective bargaining activity for federal employees whose jobs deal with national security, a move that could prevent hundreds of thousands of federal workers from joining unions.
The sticking point is a law passed by Congress to strengthen federal employees' collective bargaining rights, which the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) argued the Trump executive order bans.
The March order applies an exception in the law to employees in the departments of Treasury, State, Defense, Justice, Veterans Affairs, and parts of Health and Human Services, Interior, Energy, Commerce, and Homeland Security, among others.
The NTEU argued in the suit that the exception was narrow and applied to the FBI and a few other agencies, not to jobs in the agencies above.
In the NTEU's view, the president just wants to be able to fire federal employees more easily.
“The President’s sweeping Executive Order is inconsistent with the narrow exception that Congress provided,” the NTEU said. “None of the NTEU-represented agencies that the Order targets … do national security or intelligence work. Indeed, the Administration’s own issuances show that the President’s exclusions are not based on national security concerns, but instead a desire to make federal employees easier to fire and to weaken federal sector unions.”
The Department of Justice countered these arguments by saying that union negotiations could harm the readiness of federal employees to defend the nation.
After all, if union workers necessary for national security decide to strike, it could leave a gaping hole in the country's defenses.
National security is a part of many federal jobs, even if indirectly.
National president of NTEU Doreen Greenwald said after the order was issued that it was a “victory for federal employees, their union rights and the American people they serve.”
“NTEU will continue to use every tool available to protect federal employees and the valuable services they provide from these hostile attacks on their jobs, their agencies and their legally protected rights to organize,” Greenwald added.
Could Trump be trying to make it easier to fire federal workers?
It's possible he wants to expand the cuts made by DOGE so far into other areas, combine jobs, or reduce staff in certain areas to save some of the vast trillions of taxpayer dollars currently spent by agencies.
On the other hand, maybe he just wants to keep the country more secure and keep our enemies from exploiting weaknesses.
