WASHINGTON—Using “national security” as an excuse, and accusing federal worker unions of obstructing virtually everything, worker-hating Republican President Donald Trump ordered more than 30 federal agencies, most of them large, to trash their union contracts—now.
Trump’s fact sheet and the memo from his Office of Personnel Management Acting Director, Charles Ezell, are filled with anti-union vitriol. Trump also wraps himself in the flag, by basically declaring unions are the enemy of the people and the country. OPM is the federal government’s human resources arm.
“President Trump refuses to let union obstruction interfere with his efforts to protect Americans and our national interests,” OPM’s fact sheet blares, without evidence of unions obstructing any protections.
The two documents also provide a glimpse of Trump’s plans for private-sector workers, once he gets finished destroying federal workers and unions. In his first term, Trump White House aides, alumni of the far-right worker-hating Heritage Foundation, openly said “feds first, everyone else afterwards.”
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler rang that alarm in her response to Trump, as did Postal Workers President Mark Dimondstein at a forum several days before.
“To every single American who cares about the fundamental freedom of all workers, now is the time to be even louder. The labor movement is not about to let Trump and an unelected billionaire,” Elon Musk, whom analysts call Trump’s puppeteer, “destroy what we’ve fought for generations to build. We will fight this outrageous attack on our members with every fiber of our collective being,” said Shuler.
Very definition of union busting
“This executive order is the very definition of union-busting. It strips the fundamental right to unionize and collectively bargain from workers across the federal government at more than 30 agencies.”
Federal estimates show that last year, just over one million of the nation’s 2.2 million federal workers were unionized before destruction wrought by Trump and his billionaire puppeteer and chainsaw wielder, Elon Musk. Destroying federal unions would slam that figure, and overall union membership.
“The workers who make sure our food is safe to eat, care for our veterans, protect us from public health emergencies and much more will no longer have a voice on the job or the ability to organize with their coworkers for better conditions at work so they can efficiently provide the services the public relies upon. It’s clear this order is punishment for unions who are leading the fight against the administration’s illegal actions in court—and a blatant attempt to silence us,” Shuler said.
Government Employees (AFGE) President Everett Kelley made the same point after the fact sheet and memo were released after 10:30 pm Eastern Time on March 27. Kelley, who heads the largest federal worker union, also promised to sue Trump’s regime to overturn the dictate.
“President Trump’s 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 Kelley, an Army veteran.
“This administration’s bullying tactics represent a clear threat not just to federal employees and their unions, but to every American who values democracy and the freedoms of speech and association. Trump’s threat to unions and working people across America is clear: Fall in line or else.”
Top lobbies for the corrupt corporate class have yet to comment on either Trump’s latest memo and Ezell’s fact sheet or Trump’s overall aim. Even the venal and vicious National Right to Work Committee, a corporate-funded tool against what it calls “forced unionism”—a lie–has yet to respond.
Trump exempts cops from his abolishment of collective bargaining agreements. He echoes former anti-union Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wis., who let cop unions who supported his election in 2010 bargain and collect dues—and smashed all other Wisconsin public unions. Trump lets federal “police” and firemen to continue to bargain but, like all other federal workers, they can’t bargain over wages.
“President Trump supports constructive partnerships with unions who work with him. He will not tolerate mass obstruction that jeopardizes his ability to manage agencies with vital national security missions,” the Office of Personnel Management memo declares haughtily.
“Certain federal unions have declared war on President Trump’s agenda,” the fact sheet declares. “The largest federal union”—AFGE, though Ezell did not name it—”describes itself as ‘fighting back’ against Trump. It is widely filing grievances to block Trump’s policies.
“VA’s unions have filed 70 national and local grievances over President Trump’s policies since the inauguration—an average of over one a day,” it contends. AFGE and National Nurses United split the bulk of the workers at the Veterans Affairs Department.
The Trump regime memo names several departments and agencies for complete de-unionization: State, Treasury, Justice, Veterans Affairs, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Federal Communications Commission, and USAID, which multibillionaire Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” invaders already literally smashed to smithereens.
Trump also de-unionizes trade agencies. “Trade is a national security tool,” the memo declares.
Trump also would outlaw unions at—among others–most of the Homeland Security Department, plus the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, the Agriculture Department’s food safety and animal and plant health and safety agencies, and the National Institutes of Health, whose post-doctoral researchers just unionized with the Auto Workers.
Outlaws collective bargaining for independents too
Trump also outlaws collective bargaining for the now-independent unions representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents. Cops of those two agencies gleefully carry out Trump’s orders for arrests, imprisonment, and deportation of anyone they find with brown skin, native or migrant, on suspicion of their victims being undocumented.
Ironically, those units for ICE and the Border Patrol withdrew from AFGE and the AFL-CIO and endorsed Trump for the presidency. Those small unions praised his plan to turn cops loose.
Trump has the leeway to order such destruction because the federal government is an open shop, the equivalent of a large right-to-work state. But federal labor-management law and rules give him even wider permission for unilateral moves, such as canceling contracts, the fact sheet states.
Trump’s edict was expected. He forecasted it verbally earlier in this term. And he attempted in his prior term to convert the nation’s top 50,000 civil servant positions into “Schedule F” workers—fireable at will, just as in the days of the spoils system of the Gilded Age, when all federal jobs were political.
And just days before, in a preview of this memo, Trump ordered his agencies to deep-six the union contract for the nation’s 45,000 Transportation Security Officers, the airport screeners. They’re AFGE members. The union is suing Trump to challenge their firing.
This firing is much bigger and could, if he succeeds, deal a huge blow to the government worker unions—AFGE, the Treasury Employees (NTEU), the National Federation of Federal Employees-IAM (NFFE), National Nurses United (NNU) and smaller sections of other unions, including the Communications Workers and the Professional and Technical Employees.
The memo spells out steps agency chiefs and Trump Cabinet officers will use to destroy the unions on “national security” grounds. They include:
- A ban on collective bargaining and on union recognition. Trump leaves details of imposing those bans to general counsels, who are Trumpite political appointees.
- “Agency CBAs often create procedural impediments to separating poor performers…Covered agencies and subdivisions should seek to bring their policies into alignment with specific administration priorities,” the memo says. In English, follow Trump’s dictates or be canned. He also orders agencies to “separate employees who cannot or will not improve their performance to meet required standards.”
- Give “underperforming employees” 30 days to improve, or be fired. Trump leaves defining “underperforming” to the bosses. If the contract gives workers 60 or 120 days, the time will be cut to 30 days when the pact ends, or is trashed. VA workers, including whistleblowers vulnerable to boss retaliation, get even less time to improve
- Ban unions from handling worker grievances or using federal time in bargaining and other union tasks. That goes far beyond what Trump did in his first term. Then, he threw the federal worker unions out of their small offices in federal buildings, took away their phones, computers and fax machines and declared federal shop stewards could handle union business on their own time and on their own dime. This time, he takes away payroll deduction of dues.
- Institutionalizing mass firings, called “large-scale reductions in force (RIFs)” in government-speak. “OPM previously provided guidance about agency collective bargaining obligations when undertaking RIFs. Covered agencies and subdivisions that terminate their CBAs are advised that this guidance will no longer apply,” the memo says.
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