A federal judge is temporarily allowing select federal agencies and unions to continue collective bargaining after executive orders from President Donald Trump earlier this year sought to cancel those agreements.
A preliminary injunction signed by U.S. District Court for D.C. Judge Paul Friedman on Sept. 30 allowed the collective bargaining rights of federal employees represented by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), the American Federation of Teachers, the International Association of Machinists, and several other AFL-CIO member unions.
Those unions represent employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Departments of Defense and Energy.
The suit was filed after Trump signed an order in March using a provision to bar unionization at most federal agencies, on the basis that their functions were tied to national security. That included all cabinet-level federal agency chief information officer offices and significant portions of 20 large agencies and their components – or around one million federal employees.
A second order signed in late August added more federal agencies and their components to his list of agencies prohibited from having collective bargaining agreements.
The agency employees and their unions fell under the first order and argued that the union-busting order was beyond the president’s powers and that it violated administrative procedure laws, along with several constitutional amendments.
A draft order submitted by the plaintiffs would bar the Trump administration from ending collective bargaining agreements for federal employees represented by IFPTE and the other unions at the four agencies represented in the suit.
In a similar case this summer, an appeals court issued a formal stay on an injunction by a district judge in California, allowing the March executive order to go into effect. However, that case was argued on the basis that the majority of the workers represented by the unions did not perform work related to national security.