Labor Union Sues to Restore Collective Bargaining Rights Stripped by DJT

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The National Treasury Employees Union filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump’s executive order that stripped many federal employees of labor law protections by reclassifying several agencies.

The executive order stripped workers at the specified agencies of collective bargaining rights by claiming the agencies have a “primary function” in “intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.” Agencies specified in the order included the Food and Drug Administration, Bureau of Land Management, International Trade Commission, Veterans Affairs and National Science Foundation.

NTEU is the second-largest labor union for federal employees. The union asserts that Trump’s order aims to make it easier to slash the federal workforce by ending employees’ access to labor unions. NTEU also claims the order is retribution against labor unions for the lawsuits they have filed against mass firings, which led to court order to reinstate thousands of unlawfully terminated federal workers.

Trump’s executive order has caused heads of the specified agencies to block payroll deductions for labor union dues, which account for half of NTEU’s revenue stream. The executive order is so broad that if it stands, two thirds of federal workers will not be allowed to belong to a labor union. NTEU argues that Trump has gone far beyond the narrow authority Congress defined for exempting government agencies from collective bargaining rights.

Click here to read the executive order.