Posts tagged Elon Musk
Unions, cities, nonprofits sue to block Trump workforce cuts
May 1, 2025 // Musk has tempered his original goal for DOGE to slash $1 trillion from government spending, saying this month it was on track to cut $150 billion this year. The Trump administration has faced more than 200 lawsuits challenging its policies, with a significant number calling the president's directives unconstitutional. The case is American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO et al v Trump et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 25-03698.
Largest federal employee union, a leading Trump opponent, to lay off more than half of staff
April 28, 2025 // “It’s going to demolish us,” said Justin Youngblood, president of an AFGE chapter that represents workers at a VA hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. “That’s going to cut the legs off of AFGE and all of the locals.” He said the union's national leadership should have been better prepared to manage an expected downturn in revenue during Trump's second term.
Commentary: Federal workers shouldn’t have collective bargaining rights
April 22, 2025 // Government unions’ response to DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts underscores the need for reform
OPM proposes rule to formally revive Schedule F
April 22, 2025 // The Office of Personnel Management on Friday filed proposed regulations that would formally revive Schedule F, setting the stage for tens of thousands of federal workers to be stripped of their civil service protections, making them effectively at-will employees. The proposal, which will be published in the Federal Register on April 23, outlines the new excepted service category, now called Schedule Policy/Career, purports to remove “cumbersome adverse action procedures” for employees in what the administration deems to be policy-related jobs and accused the Biden administration, which filed its own regulations last year seeking to prevent Schedule F’s return, of “protecting poor performers.”
Unions Form Pro Bono Legal Network for Federal Workers Targeted by Trump
April 16, 2025 // “We knew there would be a lot of quick and valiant legal work in the federal courts, but we knew there was a chance you’d have to go to the employee agencies to protect the workers’ rights,” Deborah Greenfield, the network’s executive director, said in an interview. One challenge for the network and their potential clients is that some of these bodies, like the National Labor Relations Board, are themselves in a state of limbo as courts weigh whether Mr. Trump has the power to fire appointed board members.
Federal employee alleges DOGE activity resulted in data breach at labor board
April 16, 2025 // The specialist, Daniel Berulis, made the allegations in a sworn declaration submitted to members of Congress and to a federal whistleblower office, asking them to investigate what he called a cybsersecurity breach. His lawyer said that Berulis had also been targeted with a threatening note and photographs showing him near where he lives. The declaration was first reported by NPR, and NBC News has not independently verified the allegations.
Unions are failing to protect the privacy of members from hackers and DOGE
April 11, 2025 // Last year, Service Employees International Union Local 1000, which serves 100,000 California state employees, also fell victim to ransomware. And in a similar lack of transparency, the California union masked what happened behind vagaries and euphemisms, calling the crime “a network disruption by an outside actor.” This dereliction of duty comes at a great cost. Following another data breach, UNITE HERE, a New York-based labor union that exposed 800,000 people to a data breach, paid $6 million in out-of-court settlement. In 2023, a Boston union lost $6.4 million of member health funds to hackers. Most corporations have sensitive personal information. And that comes with a duty to protect it
‘Trump and Musk are setting the example’: how companies are becoming emboldened to be more anti-union
April 10, 2025 // That tougher behavior under former president Ronald Reagan sped the decline of private sector unions. Today, just 6% of private sector workers are in unions, while 32% of public sector workers are. Anti-union ideologues are increasingly targeting public sector unions, which often support Democrats. “Because almost half of the labor movement is now in the public sector, the assault that we’re seeing now is really focused on the public sector,” McCartin said. “That really threatens to break the spine of the labor movement.”
‘Federal employee unions’ likely behind Trump protests: Geraldo
April 8, 2025 // NewsNation correspondent-at-large Geraldo Rivera and progressive YouTuber Bryan Tyler Cohen join “CUOMO” to discuss Stephen A. Smith’s possible run for the presidency in 2028 and if the “Hands Off” protests will have any tangible impact.
Federal Workers Get Second Musk Buyout Offer
April 2, 2025 // The initiative bears many of the hallmarks of Musk’s “Fork in the Road” offer in January, which allowed federal workers to leave their jobs in February but continue being paid through September. This time the offers are being made agency-by-agency as part of each department’s mandate to reduce the size of its workforce. Deadlines and rules for eligibility differ by department.