Additional Agencies Ordered to End Collective Bargaining
President Trump ordered additional agencies and agency subcomponents to terminate their collective bargaining agreements, as the president continues to take a hatchet to federal unions.
The second executive order follows one in March that ordered agencies with national security implications to end their relationship with unions. That order seeks to end collective bargaining for about two-thirds of the federal government workforce.
Added under the new order are the following:
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Hydropower facilities in the Bureau of Reclamation
National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) and National Weather Service (NWS), each part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Office of the Commissioner of Patents, Patent and Trademark Office (PTO)
U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM)
The executive order said the agencies were added because they were determined to have “intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work” as their primary function.
The president said he’s using authority granted to him under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA) to terminate the union agreements.
In a fact sheet accompanying the executive order, the White House noted that requirements due to federal labor relations can delay agency operations.
“These delays can impact the ability of agencies with national security responsibilities to implement policies swiftly and fulfill their critical missions,” stated the fact sheet.
Labor Leaders React
Federal labor organizations were quick to react and promised to fight in court, like they are currently doing over the first executive order.
“What is surprising is that on the eve of Labor Day weekend, when workers are to be celebrated, the Trump administration has doubled down on being the most anti-labor, anti-worker administration in U.S. history. We will continue to fight in the courts, on the Hill and at the grassroots levels against this,” said Matt Biggs, national president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), one of the unions which represents NASA workers.
“Several agencies including NASA and the National Weather Service have already been hollowed out by reckless DOGE cuts, so for the administration to further disenfranchise the remaining workers in the name of ‘efficiency’ is immoral and abhorrent,” said American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) national president Everett Kelley.
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration started dismantling union representation at agencies including the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This as litigation continues over the matter.
The timing comes of course as the nation marks Labor Day.
And it comes as President Trump recently had a giant portrait of himself draped on the exterior of the Department of Labor building alongside one of President Theodore Roosevelt. It features the president’s second inaugural portrait, the logo for the America 250 initiative, and the slogan "American Workers First."
