The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) has sued the Trump administration over President Trump’s recent Executive Order that excludes most of the federal workforce from union representation.
The lawsuit was filed March 31 in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. The union is seeking an injunction from the court.
The lawsuit states:
Congress granted federal employees collective bargaining rights. Congress gave the President narrow authority to exclude some agencies from the collective bargaining statute. But the President may use that authority only if the agency primarily does intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work, and only if the statute cannot be applied “in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations.”
The President’s sweeping Executive Order is inconsistent with this narrow authority. The Administration’s own issuances show that the President’s exclusions are not based on national security concerns, but instead a policy objective of making federal employees easier to fire and political animus against federal sector unions. The Executive Order is therefore unlawful and must be enjoined.
NTEU stated in a press release:
…no president has ever exempted an entire Cabinet-level agency from collective bargaining rights, only discrete offices within agencies that clearly perform primarily security or intelligence work. President Trump’s order would block NTEU from representing frontline employees in more than a dozen agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Internal Revenue Service, Health and Human Services, and others.
None of the NTEU-represented agencies swept up by this order has a primary function of intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative or national security work, the lawsuit states. Further, NTEU’s representation of them, for decades in some cases, has never had an adverse effect on national security.
Trump’s Executive Order modifies an Executive Order that was issued by President Jimmy Carter. The Trump Order significantly expands the list of federal agencies that are excluded from union representation on the basis of national security. The Justice Department has already used the Executive Order as the basis to sue the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) to release eight agencies from their collective bargaining agreements.
The reasoning behind excluding the agencies from union representation is that negotiating collective bargaining agreements with the unions is an impediment that can jeopardize national security.
A fact sheet on the Executive Order published by the White House states, “The CSRA [Civil Service Reform Act] enables hostile Federal unions to obstruct agency management. This is dangerous in agencies with national security responsibilities.”
It came as no surprise that unions would fight the Trump administration. A lawsuit from AFGE is likely to be forthcoming soon as well since the union announced it was preparing legal action as soon as the Executive Order was issued last week. It is a dispute that will have to be resolved in the courts and could end up before the Supreme Court.
For more information about the situation, see:
- Trump Takes Aim at Cutting Back Unions’ Involvement in Federal Government
- Justice Department Sues AFGE to Release Agencies from Bargaining Agreements
- Video: Trump vs. Federal Unions: Understanding the New Executive Order
