Federal Unions Prepare For Existential Battle With Trump Administration

As the incoming boss of the federal workforce, President-elect Donald Trump has made clear his disdain for civil servants. He’s called them “crooked” and “dishonest” people who are “destroying” the country. He’s equated them with the conspiracy theorists’ “deep state.” And he’s promised to fire a lot of them after he assumes office next month.

Some of Trump’s tools for attacking the bureaucracy are well-known. One is the creation of a new Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory body headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy that will recommend government cuts. Another is the pursuit of Schedule F, a proposal to reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees so the Trump administration can more easily purge them.

But those headline-grabbing plans tend to overshadow another likely aim of the incoming administration: to weaken and, in some cases, perhaps even dismantle the federal-sector unions that have protected government workers for decades.

Unlike unions in the private sector or local government, federal unions cannot bargain directly over workers’ pay. But they can still provide job security and challenge discipline meted out by supervisors. This has made them a longtime target of Trump’s policy advisers and Republicans in general.

Although Trump was overtly hostile to unions of all stripes during his first presidency, his choice of a pro-union Republican for labor secretary has bolstered hopes that his second go-round might be a little different. But unions operating in the federal space have no illusions about what to expect, especially as Trump vows to shrink the federal government and gauges the loyalty of those who would serve under him.

Most expect a better-prepared and more ambitious Trump administration than the previous one, enabled not only by a GOP-controlled Congress but a right-wing judiciary skeptical of both unions and the administrative state.

“It’s a really dangerous moment,” said Joseph McCartin, a labor historian at Georgetown University who chronicled Ronald Reagan’s breaking of the air-traffic controllers’ union. “I think the attitude is going to be very aggressive. I would be surprised if they don’t challenge the very premise and operation of [federal] unions.”

After he assumes office, Trump is likely to sign a batch of executive orders aimed at weakening federal unions and making it more difficult for them to function. A trio of orders is already drafted — Trump signed them 16 months into his first presidency, leading to a court battle over their legality.

“The blueprint for attacking federal unions and federal employees is already there, because they deployed it last time,” said Cory Bythrow, chief of staff at the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers. “And we expect them to deploy it right out of the gate — and then some.”

Those executive orders called for renegotiating all union contracts with an eye toward “management rights,” and paring back workers’ recourse in the disciplinary process so that it’s easier to fire them. They also sought to kick unions physically out of government buildings, and reduce their use of “official time,” in which union officials and stewards, who are government employees, can represent members while on the clock.

Official time can only be used toward “representational” matters, like filing grievances and attending labor-management meetings, and the amount of time a union gets is bargained in the contract. Unions say it would be hard to carry out their duties without official time, especially since federal workplaces are by law “open shops” — that is, employees can’t be required to pay any dues even if they are covered by the contract.

Republicans and anti-union groups have targeted official time for years, deeming it a waste of taxpayer money. But as with Schedule F, unions believe the real aim is to strip away job protections and pave the way for firings, by making it logistically more difficult to represent members.

“The idea is to weaken the defense in the disciplinary [process],” said Matthew Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, a union with members at NASA, the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies. “To fire people without due process or union protections — that’s really the intention.”

A federal judge struck down key portions of Trump’s executive orders during his first term, but an appeals court later overturned that decision. (Biden rescinded the orders after taking office.)

Unions expect another legal fight this time, only sooner. Project 2025, the transition blueprint drawn up by Trump allies, said the biggest problem with the anti-union executive orders from Trump’s first term is that they “were issued too late.”

Indeed, the very existence of Project 2025 suggests the administration will be better organized and more ambitious this time in trying to reform the bureaucracy. (Trump tried to keep the project at arm’s length during the campaign but has been filling his administration with its authors.) The project was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that’s long advocated for cutting government and weakening unions.

The Heritage types are much more likely to influence policy during Trump’s second term than his first, predicted John Hatton, the head of policy and programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees, a group that advocates for federal workers.

“I do think there is a clearer plan this time than at the start of the first Trump administration,” Hatton said. “I think the likelihood of those groups’ policies being put in place this time around is much higher.”

Union contracts could serve as a major roadblock to the firings and layoffs promised by Trump and his advisor Musk, the richest man in the world.

The administration could revisit a tactic from the president-elect’s first term: stacking a federal labor agency with appointees who will essentially rewrite union contracts in management’s favor. Federal unions have been hustling to lock down new contracts in part to avoid this scenario.

Union leaders also suspect the White House might try to end payroll dues deduction, the primary way unions are funded.

Republican lawmakers have gone after dues deduction for public sector unions in several states, forcing unions to try to sign members up for credit card payments instead. Republicans in the House have proposed a bill to ban federal agencies and the U.S. Postal Service from deducting dues even though it’s workers’ choice whether to authorize the deductions.

Such deductions are protected by statute, but Bythrow said he could see the Trump administration trying to end it without an act of Congress. He described such a strategy as: “We’re going to do this… We’ll see you in court when you’re bankrupt.”

But the administration could go well beyond creating mere administrative headaches for unions, and attack the very premise of collective bargaining for the federal workforce. Like many Republicans have for years, Project 2025 urges lawmakers to reconsider “whether public-sector unions are appropriate in the first place.”

Federal unionism has been enshrined in law since the Jimmy Carter administration, making it difficult for Republicans to roll back without a filibuster-proof Senate. But there are ways Trump could try to strip away labor rights at particular agencies.

Not all departments allow for collective bargaining under the law — there are exclusions for investigative, intelligence and national security work. Unions are prepared for the administration to try to move more departments under the banner of “national security sensitive” in this regard, in order to eliminate union rights and toss out collective bargaining agreements. During his first term, Trump issued an executive order curtailing rights at the Department of Defense; it was later reversed by Biden.

“We’re very concerned about that,” said IFPTE’s Biggs, whose union represents civilian employees at the agency. “We’re preparing legal challenges to those kinds of potential efforts.”

Project 2025 recommends “removing all unions” within the Department of Homeland Security. It singles out the Transportation Security Administration to be “deunionized immediately,” along with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the legal immigration process.

TSA workers could be especially vulnerable to losing union rights, since theirs are not guaranteed in the law that created the agency following the 9/11 terror attacks. The administration of former President Barack Obama first granted TSA workers limited bargaining rights, and the Biden administration later expanded them, but Trump could rescind them without much difficulty.

Mike Gayzagian, a TSA worker and the president of AFGE Local 2617 in New England, said collective bargaining has helped improve working at an agency notorious for second-class status and low morale. TSA employees were on a lesser payscale than most federal workers until just last year, when moves by the Biden administration led to raises of up to 30%.

Gayzagian doesn’t think cracking down on the union would help the agency retain workers, and he certainly hopes it isn’t a priority for Trump officials.

“We’re worried about what’s going to happen next year,” Gayzagian said. “But hopefully we’re down on the bottom of the list.”