Letter to OPM from Senator Ernst
Several weeks ago, the Social Security Administration agreed with a federal employee union to guarantee telework would remain in effect as it currently stood for bargaining unit employees until after the Trump term of office was over. No one doubted this would be restricted to one agency or that the practice of including restrictions in labor agreements would spread.
Senator Joni Ernst has confirmed that the practice is spreading throughout the federal government. In a letter to the Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management, she wrote:
Sadly, employee union bosses have forgotten that federal workers’ obligation is to serve the American people, not themselves. In its final hours, the outgoing administration is working overtime to ratify collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) and master labor agreements (MLA)—sweeping telework privileges that will make the bureaucracy unaccountable to the American taxpayers and the incoming president for the length of his entire term in the White House.
The union bosses are using the ratified contracts to further insulate the bureaucracy from any accountability.
Goals of New Union Contract Provisions
The new agreements, negotiated with Biden administration political appointees in charge of the agencies, have several goals. High on the list of union objectives is to prevent the Trump administration from requiring federal employees to return to a government office for work.
Senator Ernst quoted the president of NTEU: “The administration’s new guidance on agency work environments does not override [CBAs] … this means that for the vast majority of our members, their access to telework … will remain unchanged.”
During the first Trump administration, President Trump issued several Executive Orders placing restrictions on unions and also made it easier to fire a federal employee. These Orders limited the amount of time a union official could work on behalf of a federal union with federal employee pay and benefits instead of working as a federal employee, limit the free use of federal agency office space, and made it quicker and easier to fire federal employees based on poor performance.
According to Senator Ernst, “the Biden administration is working with union bosses to undermine the incoming president’s agenda to get Washington back to work.” It is doing this with new provisions in labor contracts designed to prevent the restrictions from being implemented again during the Trump administration.
Ernst: Bureaucrats and “Phoning it In”
In her letter to OPM, Senator Ernst wrote:
I am calling on you to stop all collective bargaining or any other contractual arrangements related to telework for federal employees extending beyond the few weeks remaining in the Biden administration.
Giving bureaucrats another four-year vacation from the office is unacceptable. Bureaucrats have had enough gap years—it’s time to get them back to work.
Americans are tired of being put on hold by bureaucrats who are phoning it in.
What’s most outrageous, the union bosses’ efforts to keep federal employees away from the office and serving taxpayers in person are being subsidized with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Will OPM Change These Actions by Unions and Agencies?
The reality is OPM is still under the direction of a Biden appointee. He is unlikely to take any action in the waning days of the Biden administration that restricts agencies from negotiating union agreements intended to restrict the Trump administration from changing these work requirements. The actions being taken by these agencies is in line with Biden administration policies implementing policies supporting unions. That is not going to change in his final days as president.
The labor agreements will put a roadblock in the way of changing how the federal bureaucracy functions. Congress could pass a law overturning the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA) that allows unions to negotiate working conditions in agencies. It could also pass a law that would specifically overturn these negotiated agreements. That would be very difficult with a thin Republican majority in both Congressional chambers.
The new Department of Government Efficiency leaders, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy, will find the deep state is well-versed in thriving and surviving in a hostile environment. Various legal challenges will be filed immediately after President Trump tries to introduce changes such as the ones outlined in the letter from Senator Ernst. Four years may not be enough to make these changes without Congressional legislation.
