Trump’s Order on Union Bargaining Blocked by Court

The order comes simply in advance of the April 26 deadline for companies to send recommendations for additional bargaining systems across federal government to target with the Public service Reform Act’s so-called nationwide security exception.

Executive Order Challenged

Last month, Head of state Trump authorized an executive order citing a rarely utilized arrangement in the 1978 Public Service Reform Act to prevent unions from representing employees at a myriad of government companies, from the Protection and Homeland Security departments to the Irs and the Environmental Protection Agency, under the auspices of nationwide protection.

Friday’s initial order blocks all federal staff members, save President Trump, from applying the provisions of either the exec order or OPM’s subsequence guidance for applying it.
The Bold Bureau/ Getty Images

Agencies, under direction from the Office of Personnel Administration, have thus far refrained from formally terminating union contracts while the administration waits for the outcome of two legal actions filed against unions in Trump-friendly courts. But they have actually taken numerous actions to abrogate those arrangements in practice, including finishing engagement in bargaining negotiations and grievance procedures and surreptitiously finishing the automatic deduction of union charges from federal workers’ incomes.

During oral debates in the case Wednesday, Friedman disagreed with the president’s decision that companies such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Farming Division had a “key feature” of national safety and security. And he appeared to agree with the union’s assertion that the executive order amounted to retaliation against labor teams that have tested the White House’s workforce policies in court.

Court Blocks Trump’s Order

A government judge in Washington, D.C., on Friday provided a preliminary injunction obstructing the Trump management from carrying out a March exec order that supposed to strip collective negotiating civil liberties from two-thirds of the government workforce.

In a short two-page filing, U.S. Area Judge Paul Friedman granted the National Treasury Worker Union’s request for a preliminary injunction, finding the exec order– and OPM’s subsequence assistance for executing it– to be “illegal.” It obstructs all federal staff members, save Head of state Trump, from applying the arrangements of either document.