Posts tagged Everett Kelley
Editorial Board: America’s veterans deserve better care than government unions provide
December 8, 2025 // The smarter approach would be for Congress to affirm Trump’s decision to strip collective bargaining rights while dispensing with his flimsy national security justification. Consider the legacy of pro-union President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who opposed collective bargaining and strikes for federal employees. As Roosevelt and other pro-union leaders understood in the 1930s, collective bargaining is carried out against an employer. The government’s employer is the public. Allowing unelected labor union bosses to negotiate against the public’s elected representatives to determine how the government gets run is undemocratic.
House majority forces vote on bill to restore collective bargaining for most federal employees
November 18, 2025 // Meanwhile, another bipartisan group of lawmakers is also leading a bill that would restore collective bargaining rights for VA employees. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) are leading that bill. The National Treasury Employees Union, as well as the National Weather Service Employees Organization and the Patent Office Professional Association, are also suing the Trump administration over its collective bargaining rollback. Federal courts in D.C. will hold proceedings in both cases next month.
Op-ed: Democrats Caved in the Shutdown Fight. Unions Let Them.
November 13, 2025 // The main rationale provided by AFGE president Everett Kelley was that his members were suffering economically from the shutdown. There’s no doubt that this hurt is very real, and I do not doubt the sincerity of Kelley’s commitment to his membership. But AFGE’s leadership could have decided to pressure Republicans rather than Democrats to end the shutdown. That was a political choice. Rank-and-file AFGE members this morning released an open letter calling on their national leadership to oppose the deal. As one rank-and-file AFGE member wrote to me last night, “Many of us are furious at AFGE leadership
Top labor groups break with federal union’s support of Republican measure to end shutdown
November 4, 2025 // But many of the top labor unions told ABC News that they continue to back the strategy taken up by Democrats, breaking with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents hundreds of thousands of federal workers losing out on pay and staring down the threat of layoffs. Many labor unions, a key bloc within the Democratic Party, support the push for an extension of Obamacare subsidies and remain eager to fight a president they view as an adversary of workers, some labor analysts and union officials said.
Union call to reopen government exposes pain point for Democrats
October 29, 2025 // Democrats wrestle with whether to extend health subsidies for millions or leave more than 1 million federal workers without pay
Largest federal workers union calls for an end to the shutdown, putting pressure on Democrats
October 28, 2025 // The country’s largest union representing federal workers is calling for lawmakers to pass a short-term spending measure to immediately end the government shutdown, urging Democrats to abandon their current position and join Republicans in supporting a stopgap solution.
Video: Union president says federal government employees are “very traumatized” by the shutdown
October 9, 2025 // Everett Kelley, President of the American Federation of Government Employees, joined CNN's Pamela Brown to discuss how government employees are feeling about the ongoing shutdown in light of threats the Trump administration has made over their jobs
Unions sue over Trump’s ‘illegal’ plan to fire many federal workers in a shutdown
October 2, 2025 // The suit, which was filed by the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, involves the groups Democracy Forward and the State Democracy Defenders Fund. The court docket did not immediately reflect which judge would handle the case, which names Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought as a defendant.
Bill to nullify Trump’s union executive orders introduced by 48 senators
September 18, 2025 // All Senate Democrats and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, have signed on as sponsors of the Protect America’s Workforce Act, while the measure is just two signatures away from guaranteed floor debate in the House.
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.