PROVIDENCE, R.I.—In yet another win for the Government Employees (AFGE) in a lawsuit against G President Donald Trump, a Rhode Island federal judge restored the union’s national contract covering some 300,000 workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose ruled on March 13 that “the termination of the Master CBA on August 6” of last year “seems substantially motivated by the plaintiffs’ history and frequency of vocally opposing changes to labor policies.” AFGE and its Rhode Island Local 2305 had sued the VA.
AFGE officers cheered the decision. The actions of Trump’s VA Secretary, Douglas Collins, “and the VA are causing irreparable harm to the union and our members,” the union said in a statement.
National VA Council President Mary Jean “MJ” Burke said AFGE “is fighting to hold the VA accountable for breaking the law in its attempt to silence the union and deprive workers of their constitutional rights.”
Trump’s lawyers had claimed that bans on unions in “national security” agencies included banning unions at the VA. Trump’s made similar claims in other cases in other U.S. District Courts—and lost.
Judge DuBose retorted in her ruling that when Collins axed the master contract last August, he didn’t even mention national security. Instead, Collins claimed the union opposed his and Trump’s plans for greater efficiency and accountability.
That’s punishing the union and its members for exercising their rights to free speech, the judge said.
She imposed a permanent injunction against VA, ordered it to reinstate both the national contract and local contracts.
And Collins didn’t have the right to offer national security as an excuse after the fact, Judge DuBose added. She called the termination of the pact “arbitrary and capricious,” adding that actions with those characteristics break federal law.
“Neither the press release nor the internal memo released on August 6 about terminating the master contract—and all local ones, too—”mention national security concerns or interests, highlighting instead the cost to the VA of its employees’ union representation as well as the difficulty the VA had rewarding high performing employees and holding poorly performing employees accountable,” the judge wrote.
“Without any mention of the basis” for ending the master pact and local contracts, “the court concludes the reasons which the defendants”—the VA—”relied on…to explain the termination and the perceived benefits thereof cannot be a reasonable explanation for this agency action.”
“Despite this administration’s shameful and hostile attempts to silence VA workers and perpetuate falsehoods that they have ‘no union,’ the leaders and members of AFGE/National Veterans Administration Council stand together with a clear message: We are still here,” Council President Burke said.
“For decades, AFGE/NVAC has been advocating to strengthen, staff, and fund the VA to ensure it remains the nation’s best health care system. The backbone of the VA is not the senior executives at
810 Vermont Avenue, but the housekeepers, claims processors, cemetery caretakers, police officers, clinicians, and support staff who show up to work every single day to provide care and services to veterans and their families.”
The judge, nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden and the first African-American federal judge in Rhode Island history, was scathing in her ruling against Trump. VA has not yet said if it will appeal her decision.
Her ruling was one of many that unions have won against Trump in lower courts. But federal worker unions meet mixed results in appeals courts–including an anti-union ruling the week before in San Francisco, letting Trump terminate 21 union contracts. And five of the U.S. Supreme Court’s six-Republican majority usually adopts wholesale the union hatred of Associate Justice Samuel Alito.
Trump publicly names and shames federal workers. He’s also fired almost 300,000 of them, and stopped only when Congress wrote a moratorium on such massacres into money bills to keep the government going. He openly calls AFGE an “enemy.”
A characterization like that prompted the judge’s comments and her finding, which the law requires, that AFGE was likely to succeed on the merits of its case, and thus deserves a nationwide win for a preliminary injunction against Trump, Collins, and the VA.
“Our union and our members were targeted for retaliation by Secretary Collins because we refused to stay silent about cuts and changes at the VA that would harm veterans,” declared AFGE President Everett Kelley, himself a veteran, like a large share of his union’s members.
“Today’s ruling holds this administration accountable and makes clear: No one can retaliate against workers for standing up for their rights. We are pleased the court restored the largest contract of VA employees and protected both the federal workforce and the veterans who depend on them,” he said.
But in one final indication of mistrust of the Trump regime, Kelley warned that “AFGE and the National VA Council will continue to closely monitor the situation to ensure the VA complies with the decision.” Trump officials have often shown his—and their—refusal to obey court orders.
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