Trump Order Could Cripple Federal Worker Unions Fighting DOGE Cuts

The unions of federal workers have sought in the last two months to conduct the resistance to President Trump and his Department of Efficiency of the Government, to intent legal actions, organizing protests and enrolling new members to thousands.

This week, Mr. Trump hit with a potentially paralyzing blow.

In a large executive order that denounced the unions as “hostile” to his agenda, the president cited concerns for national security to remove about one million public employees more than a dozen agencies from the scope of organized work, eliminating the power of the unions to represent those workers at the bargaining table or in court.

A case that accompanies the Executive Order, presented by the Administration at the Federal Court in Texas, asks a judge to give the President to permission to revoke the collective bargaining agreements, citing national security interests and affirm that the agreements had the executive authority “hindered”.

On Friday, the leaders of the work promised to challenge Trump’s actions in court. But, except for a legal intervention, the moves could kneel the federal unions and the protections for many employees of the civil service just as the workers are preparing for a new tour of working cuts throughout the government.

“The union are limp, snatching the collective bargaining agreements and then they will come to the workers,” said Brian Kelly, an employee based in the Michigan of the Environmental Protection Agency that directs a local of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union of the country. “So, it’s a worst scenario.”

The move added to the list of actions of Mr. Trump to use the levers of the presidency to weaken the enemies received, in this case trying to neutralize groups that represent the public employees who make up the “deep state” that is trying to dismantle. In the issue of the Order, Trump said that he was using powers granted to the congress to designate some sectors of the Federal Work Force Central for “national security missions”, and free from collective-bars. The employees of some agencies, such as the FBI and the CIA, are already excluded from collective bargaining for these reasons.

But, with its order, Trump has added exemptions for many workers in the affairs of veterans, treasure and energy departments, as well as the EPA, among others. Huge parts of the Department of Health and Human Services have also been designated as vital for national security, in addition to the “most of the members” of the Department of Justice.

The order was clear in its purpose: neutralize the groups that have been able to “hinder the management of agencies”.

“The goal is to prevent employees in some agencies related to the security of worsening in ways that interrupt the president’s agenda,” said Harrison Fields, spokesman for the White House.

Since Trump returned to office in January and began to impose large -scale reductions in the government’s workforce, the federal unions of employees and in particular Afge have assumed a new visibility and a central role in challenging the Trump administration. The unions achieved some successes in court by challenging the cuts relating to the efforts of the Elon Musk government’s efficiency department. Work leaders emerged as vocal samples for federal workers and as acute critics of Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk.

Afge has seen a wave of tens of thousands of new members who pay the shares since January, the Union officials said.

Samuel R. Bagenstos, professor of law of the University of Michigan and former General Consultant of the Department of Health and Human Services, said that the executive order would be vulnerable to “very significant” legal challenges, calling it “a dramatic overcoming of the president’s authority” pursuant to the laws that regulate the federal workforce. The effort to justify the move based on the rules for national security employees is a trait, Bagenstos said.

“Here we have this incredibly large effort to remove the power of any union to represent any employee,” Bagenstos said.

Union officials said Friday to fear that the president’s actions could be catastrophic for their organizations on several fronts.

They said that the cancellation of collective bargaining agreements for many workers would have the immediate effect of ending the collection of shares by the salaries of those workers.

Afge leaders estimated that 75 percent of their 300,000 members who pay the shares use salary deductions. Now, the union will have to convince members to make direct payments online to the union, they said.

In addition, the union leaders said, the president’s actions could inflict a lethal blow to their most powerful weapon so far against the Trump administration and its doge -driven cuts, the federal judicial system.

In the absence of a collective bargaining agreement, the unions would no longer be the workers’ representative, which means that a judge could discover that they no longer have the legal position to sue them on their behalf, the leaders of the Union and the lawyers said. Fields, the spokesman for the White House, said on Friday: “Because of this dispute, the unions affected by the executive order would no longer be able to represent the employees of the agencies”.

The unions said they would react. Speaking on Friday at a press conference in Capitol Hill, the president of Afge, Everett Kelley, called executive order “clearly retaliation” and said: “The worker movement will not be silenced”. Randy Erwin, the National President of the National Federation of Federal Employees – another union affected by the Order – called it “the largest assault on the collective bargaining rights that we have ever seen in this country” and has defined it “clearly illegal and unconstitutional”.

Afge’s leadership held an emergency meeting last Thursday to discuss the order. While the leadership of the Union prepared for important assaults on the workforce, some leaders have not seen such a dramatic move arrive, according to a person involved in the discussion.

Other Union officials described the preparation for such a moment, given the efforts of Mr. Trump during his first administration to reduce the power of the federal unions and remove the protections on civil service works.

The federal law imposes restrictions on federal employees. Membership in the Union cannot be mandatory, for one and federal employees they cannot hit.

Technically, Afge represents 800,000 workers, but most of them do not pay shares. In the frenzy of new inscriptions and members just involved, the leaders of the Union declared in the interviews that they often explained to workers what a union can do for them exactly. Some workers have been frustrated by the limits of the power of the unions.

The way to follow, said Kelly, the local leader of the Michigan Afge, was clear: the union had to make his case known not only to federal workers but to the Americans. “You will not have a voice in the workplace. You need people to really see how dangerous it is.”

Tyler Pager Contributed relationships.