Posts tagged House Republicans
Op-ed: She looked like a pro-worker Trump cabinet appointee. But now she’s gutting the Labor Department
July 17, 2025 // The standards on the chopping block include those issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a unit of the Labor Department, that were developed after years of effort. OSHA standards, Reindel told me, take an average of seven years — and as long as 20 years — to draft. “This is an onslaught on people’s basic protections at work.”
Pro-labor Republicans push Trump to rescind order busting most federal unions
April 3, 2025 // “This executive order, which ruthlessly strips collective bargaining agreements for over 1 million federal workers, is the most recent attack your administration has levied against our merit-based civil service in the effort to cut the workforce and replace them with political cronies,” they wrote. “While the CSRA does give the president the authority to limit collective bargaining agreements due to national security concerns, the executive order’s direction to terminate mass swaths of federal employee collective bargaining agreements is clearly intended to broadly dismantle the CSRA, which is specifically designed to grant federal employees the right to collective bargaining as a means to resolve workplace issues while maintaining the smooth functioning of government operations.”
The Latest: Judge temporarily blocks Trump plan offering incentives for federal workers to resign
February 6, 2025 // Federal workers associations have filed suit asking a federal court to stop the Trump administration’s “effective dismantling” of the lead U.S. aid agency. The lawsuit by the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees comes as the new Trump administration and ally Elon Musk are targeting the U.S. Agency for International Development for eradication, freezing its funds and placing almost all of its workers on leave or furlough.
Commerce agency near ‘collapse’ over telework, layoffs, union says
June 3, 2024 // Lawmakers, especially Republicans, have been wary of widespread remote work, saying customer service backlogs at government agencies including the Social Security Administration and the IRS prove the case for more in-person staff. Just last week, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s HR department, assured lawmakers that more than half of all federal employees work in-person full time.
Nation’s largest federal employee union endorses O’Malley to lead Social Security
August 22, 2023 // O’Malley’s nomination comes at a time when the agency he was chosen to lead is at a crossroads. House Republicans and the White House differ on how much to fund SSA in fiscal 2024 to the tune of nearly $2 billion, which administration officials are is needed to avert calamity within the agency. The union, for its part, estimates that more than $17 billion—$2 billion more than Biden request—is needed to shore up the agency’s workforce and operating procedures. And following years of conflict and deadlock at the bargaining table, AFGE and Social Security management reached an agreement last month to update a portion of their union contract, which includes commitments to set up regular union-management cooperation council meetings both at the national level and within the agency’s subcomponents, as well as plans to improve training for new employees and to boost some benefits like child-care subsidies.
ESG Is a Front for Labor
July 24, 2023 // House Republicans have declared July “ESG month,” planning hearings and bills to push back against politicized environmental, social, and governance investing. Yet so far, lawmakers have almost exclusively focused on environmental issues. Republicans should also pay attention to the “S” in ESG, which labor unions are using to advance their agenda at the expense of workers, their own members, and even taxpayers — a problem that President Biden has significantly worsened. The 2023 proxy season, which started in January and ended in June, shows the union campaign in action. Union funds and their allies, such as the New York City Employees’ Retirement System and like-minded investment managers, introduced many ESG-focused shareholder proposals designed to accelerate unionization. Consider Apple, which was targeted by five New York City pension funds, multiple investment managers, and the SEIU Master Trust Pension Plan, among others.
Unions ‘sound the alarm’ over worsening staff attrition at SSA
April 12, 2023 // With what AFGE said is a lack of competitive pay and benefits, SSA lost almost 4,500 bargaining unit employees in fiscal 2022 — over 10% of AFGE’s total membership for SSA.
House Republicans’ attempt to block staffer unions may have missed mark
March 13, 2023 // The House began allowing members’ staff to form unions last year by adopting a resolution that authorized regulations from the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights. Republicans opposed the measure at the time, and after taking control of the House, they adopted a rule that said the “regulations adopted pursuant to [last year’s resolution] shall have no force or effect” during the current Congress. While that might seem to nullify aides’ ability to form new unions, the language is actually ineffective, said Kevin Mulshine, author of the Demand Progress Education Fund report and a former senior adviser and counsel at OCWR.
They work for Congress. They also have second jobs
January 31, 2023 // The group behind the new project, the Congressional Progressive Staff Association, hopes those posts will be the first of many that will illustrate the financial hardships of poorly paid Hill staffers. The series, which you can also follow on Twitter, was inspired by Humans of New York, the popular photoblog that pairs on-the-street portrait photography with short and often poignant stories from the subjects, according to CPSA spokeswoman Zoe Bluffstone. Her group partnered with Dear White Staffers, an Instagram account that allows Hill aides to share their gripes and gossip anonymously. Bluffstone hopes Humans of the Hill will similarly show staffers that they’re not alone in their financial struggles and should band together to demand better working conditions.
Legislative staffer unions percolate beyond D.C.
January 26, 2023 // Part of its argument is that the legislative union would violate the separation of powers because it would be overseen by Oregon’s Employment Relations Board, a part of the executive branch. “All of its members are appointed by the governor, so it's controlled by the executive branch, and that subjects the legislature to the executive branch in a specific way,” Freedom Foundation attorney Rebekah Millard told POLITICO.