Judge Blocks Trump Administration From Nixing Collective Bargaining For Most Federal Employees
Late last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from implementing an executive order that a labor union says would cancel collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of federal employees.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled that a key part of President Donald Trump’s March 27 order can’t be enforced at roughly three dozen agencies and departments where employees are represented by the National Treasury Employees Union.
The union, which represents nearly 160,000 federal government employees workers, sued to challenge Trump’s order. The union said it would lose more than half of its revenue and over two-thirds of its membership if the judge denied its request for a preliminary injunction.
"We commend the court for recognizing the Trump administration’s executive order stripping collective bargaining rights for what it was: illegal, retaliatory union-busting. This was the most significant attack on workers’ rights in history, and if Trump was allowed to do it to federal workers, he would be able to do it to every worker in America, in every workplace and every industry," said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. "So this ruling to restore federal workers’ collective bargaining rights and reinstate their existing contracts—even if temporarily while the case continues in court—is an important first step."