The lawsuit asks a federal court to find that a recently-signed executive order, issued by Trump earlier in the day, empowers select government agencies to cancel or otherwise void collective bargaining agreements.
The Trump administration has filed a far-reaching lawsuit against the American Federation of Government Employees labor union, claiming that the government is no longer required to honor its negotiated contracts.
According to Reuters, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the departments of Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs, and four other government agencies, all of which are being represented by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The lawsuit asks a federal court to find that a recently-signed executive order, issued by Trump earlier in the day, empowers select government agencies to cancel or otherwise void collective bargaining agreements.
“The plaintiff agencies have collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) with the defendants, which are locals, councils, and Division 10 of the American Federation of Government Employees; those CBAs prevent the plaintiffs from implementing workforce policies that would help them further their national security missions,” the federal Department of Justice said in a press release. “The plaintiff agencies therefore wish to terminate their CBAs. But to avoid unnecessary labor strife and to ensure legal certainty, they filed this declaratory judgment action to confirm that they are legally entitled to do so.
U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi posited the lawsuit as a righteous struggle against meddlesome labor unions.
“We are taking this fight directly to the public-sector unions,” Bondi said in a statement. “By affirmatively suing in Texas, we are aggressively protecting President Trump’s efforts to ensure unions no longer interfere in the national security functions of the government.”
The defendant organization, the American Federation of Government Employees, is the largest federal worker union in the United States, representing the interests of more than 800,000 members. Several dozen of the AFGE’s affiliates are also named as defendants.
Attorneys for the Trump administration say that, shortly before leaving office, former President Joe Biden approved a collective bargaining agreement with the AFGE that would make it more difficult for his successor to fire large numbers of federal employees without justification.
The net effect, the government says, is that the executive branch can no longer effectively implement and enforce policy without being obstructed.
“The President and his senior Executive Branch officials cannot afford to be obstructed by CBAs that micromanage oversight of the federal workforce and impede performance accountability,” the lawsuit alleges.
Furthermore, the government pointed out that some of the collective bargaining contracts contain objectionable policies: some allow workers to continue working remotely, while others delegate decision-making authority to “unaccountable private arbitrators.”
The American Federation of Government Employees has, for its part, promised to defend the organization from the administration’s claims. The AFGE’s president, Everett Kelly, said that Trump’s executive order on collective bargaining is a “disgraceful” attempt to retaliate against public employees on the sole basis of union membership.
Sources
Trump administration sues to invalidate dozens of union contracts
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