Posts tagged American Federation of Government Employees Council 238
FEMA joins other federal agencies in canceling union contracts
August 12, 2025 // On Friday, FEMA’s acting administrator, David Richardson, sent a memo to American Federation of Government Employees Local 4060, the union representing the agency, saying that FEMA’s collective bargaining agreement had been terminated, ending a nearly 10-year contract.
What Trump’s win means for the federal workforce
November 6, 2024 // That’s because Trump has vowed to revive Schedule F, a controversial abortive effort at the end of his first term to strip the civil service protections of potentially tens of thousands of career federal workers in “policy-related” positions, effectively making them at-will employees. Trump and many of his former staffers have frequently bemoaned that “rogue bureaucrats” inhibited his policymaking power during his first stint in the White House. Though President Biden quickly rescinded Schedule F when he took office in 2021—before any positions could be converted out of the federal government’s competitive service—that hasn’t stopped Trump and his allies from working on the initiative in absentia. Both the Heritage Foundation and America First Policy Institute, which have organized dueling unofficial transition projects have endorsed reviving Schedule F, going so far as to creating lists of upwards of 50,000 current career civil servants to strip of their removal protections and threaten with termination.
How a union joined the Trump-proofing craze
June 4, 2024 // While Biden aims to cast himself as “the most pro-union president in American history” and shores up protections for science within agencies, government employees using collective bargaining to thwart a potential Trump administration is unprecedented and could act as a blueprint for other unions to follow suit. AFGE’s new deal also comes after the Biden administration finalized a rule in April to cement protections for civil servants, as Trump has flirted with the idea of returning to his Schedule F policy that would allow him to easily fire or reclassify government workers. The agreement would not be able to prevent a Republican-aligned EPA from enacting policy, but Cantello anticipates the agency could appeal to the Federal Labor Relations Authority if an arbitrator ruled in favor of the union.
EPA Employees Want To Put Protections Against Attacks On Science Into Their Union Contract
April 25, 2022 // “I think the idea that relying on internal enforceability on scientific integrity is not going to work anymore,” Cantello said. “Because when you get an administration like we just had, that internal enforceability is going to fail.” But Biden officials, she added, “still want to control the entire process.”