Public sector unions have long been an affront to democratic accountability at all levels of government, and President Donald Trump’s executive order issued Thursday ending collective bargaining privileges for most federal agencies brings welcome focus to the issue. Whether or not all elements of Trump’s order will stand up in federal court is a different matter, and Congress should help Trump end government union collective bargaining with fresh legislation.
When President Franklin Roosevelt first signed the Wagner Act, creating collective bargaining rights for private sector workers, he explained why these could not apply to government workers. “All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt said. “It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations.”
When government workers are given collective bargaining power, an equal and opposite amount of power has been taken away from voters. Government unions do not just bargain over pay. They also set policies for hours, working conditions, and job security. When an official from one administration signs a contract with a government union, he is limiting the ability of the next administration to manage the workforce.
For example, in the closing days of the Biden administration, Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O’Malley signed a deal with the American Federation of Government Employees guaranteeing that its 42,000 SSA staff members would not have to return to their office and could continue to work remotely. One administration cannot democratically impose its policies in this way on the next. Many such other collusive agreements between Biden appointees and their union counterparts were signed. Trump wants to scrap these contracts and should have the right to do so.
While the Wagner Act did not give federal workers collective bargaining power, the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 did, but not at all agencies. Uniformed members of the armed services could not bargain collectively, nor could employees of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Secret Service.
The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act also contains a provision empowering the president to “issue an order excluding any agency” from collective bargaining if the president determines that the agency has national security work as “a primary function.”
Trump’s executive order on Thursday names 20 agencies he claims fit under this provision. Some, including the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department, and maybe even the Department of Energy, which handles nuclear power, may arguably fit. But others, such as the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Interior, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, are a stretch. The Department of Health and Human Services may play a role in refugee resettlement, but a “primary function”?
THE KATHERINE MAHER CASE FOR DEFUNDING NPR
The largest federal government union, the American Federation of Government Employees, promises to sue the Trump administration to stop the dissolution of its members’ collective bargaining agreements. Trump may win some. But he will not win them all. Not even close.
While current law is probably not on Trump’s side, it should be and should be changed so it is. Roosevelt was right about the dangers of government unions and their undemocratic nature — we have seen the results over generations now. One administration should not be able to limit the next administration’s ability to manage the federal workforce. It is undemocratic that it should do so and is a tool of deliberate partisan sabotage, as former President Joe Biden’s parting days and weeks showed. Congress should work with the White House to remove the collective bargaining powers of all federal government employees.
