Posts tagged Civil Service Reform Act
Federal employees face reality of Schedule Policy/Career
July 8, 2026 // Trump administration officials have said the creation of Schedule Policy/Career aims to improve employee accountability and ensure the federal workforce is carrying out the president’s policy agenda. A senior administration official last month told reporters, “As long as employees are performing their job duties in a competent, professional manner,” then reclassified federal employees “have nothing to be afraid of.”
Trump formalizes move of career federal workers into ‘at will’ roles
June 6, 2026 // An executive order signed by Trump on Wednesday seeks to move those workers into the new class, saying they would be “exempted from the adverse action procedures that make removals for poor performance or misconduct so difficult.” “Consequently, employees with significant policy-making responsibilities can stay in their jobs for years even if they perform poorly, engage in misconduct, or are unwilling to advance Presidential policy across administrations, making their agencies less capable of delivering for the American people,” the White House wrote in a fact sheet describing those now in the schedule as having “at-will positions.”
Union bosses sue to defend system that helped turn federal prison into ‘rape club’
December 15, 2025 // Government union bosses wielding monopoly-bargaining privileges have on multiple occasions “frustrated and undermined accountability” in the oversight of federal prisoners, as even David Fathi of the generally pro-Big Labor American Civil Liberties Union has acknowledged. That’s why President Trump’s executive order from March is so important — it freed large swaths of the federal workforce from union bosses’ obstructionist power.
Supreme Court likely to decide fate of federal unions
June 30, 2025 // How the Supreme Court will view the matter is anybody’s guess, though the Roberts Court has shown deference to the executive branch and a willingness to revisit precedent involving public sector unions. In its 2018 Janus v. AFSCME ruling, the court said public sector employees could not be forced to join a union as a condition of employment. Federal government collective bargaining is relatively recent, having only been codified in 1978. The Roberts Court may decide collective bargaining is a privilege, not a right, for federal workers.
Op-Ed: Federal union bosses: To ‘save democracy,’ let us finish destroying it
June 30, 2025 // How are federal union bosses reacting now that a president is finally taking action to put a halt to a system that, as former union attorney Kurt Hanslowe foresaw back in 1967, empowers “entrenched and mutually supportive government officials and collective bargaining representatives” over whom the public has “diminishing control” to make joint decisions about tax rates and other public policies? True to form, union officials are claiming Trump’s efforts to restore representative government are anti-democratic! For example, American Federation of Government Employees President Everett Kelley, whose union filed the pending lawsuit to block E.O.14251, unsurprisingly claims the Trump Administration’s actions “represent a clear threat” to “every American who “values democracy.”
Judge rules Trump can’t eliminate federal workers’ union bargaining
June 27, 2025 // Siding with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and other unions, U.S. District Judge James Donato ruled that President Trump’s executive order letting several federal agencies dispense with union bargaining is likely unlawful. Donato wrote in a 29-page opinion that federal workers have had the right to unionize and collectively bargain for better employment conditions for more than 60 years, and Trump’s order threatened that “long-standing status quo.” The six unions that filed suit “appear to have been deemed hostile to the President,” he said.
Backgrounder: Executive Order: Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs
March 31, 2025 // The practice of “official time” is when unionized federal employees perform union-related activities, rather than their actual public service duties, while being paid by taxpayers. The Federal Unions EO requires that agencies, upon termination of an applicable collective bargaining agreement, reassign any workers who performed “official time” to positions where they perform solely agency business. It also contains language regarding existing grievance proceedings and allows for the head of each agency to submit a report to the President within 30 days highlighting any agency subdivisions that were not covered but should have been covered under the Federal Unions EO.
Trump signs executive order to end collective bargaining at agencies involved with national security
March 27, 2025 // President Donald Trump moved Thursday to end collective bargaining with federal labor unions in agencies with national security missions across the federal government, citing authority granted him under a 1978 law. The order, signed without public fanfare and announced late Thursday, appears to touch most of the federal government. Affected agencies include the Departments of State, Defense, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Health and Human Services, Treasury, Justice and Commerce and the part of Homeland Security responsible for border security.
Union sues DHS to protect TSA screeners’ collective bargaining rights
March 18, 2025 // The lawsuit accuses the Trump administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act’s prohibition on “arbitrary and capricious” decision-making, as well as breaching their contractual obligations under the 2024 collective bargaining agreement and in so doing, violating union members’ due process rights under the Fifth Amendment. The union also brings a First Amendment claim, arguing that the Trump administration’s decision to revoke TSA screeners’ collective bargaining rights was in retaliation for the union’s other lawsuits against the executive branch, most notably their challenge of the mass firing of probationary workers across government. A federal judge on Thursday issued a preliminary injunction in that case, requiring agencies to reinstate tens of thousands of improperly terminated workers.
White House scrubs webpage showing how taxpayers fund union activities
November 22, 2023 // The OPM, which oversees federal employment and recruiting, removed both the webpage and reports assembled over the past two decades analyzing how much taxpayer money is spent funding union activities. Additionally, OPM appears to have stopped assembling official time reports, which have historically been published every few years during the past four presidential administrations since 1998. "If federal employees are going to be legally permitted to engage in union work while on-the-clock, the very least taxpayers are owed is an accurate accounting of the associated costs," Maxford Nelsen, the director of research and government affairs at free market think tank Freedom Foundation, told Fox News Digital.