Trump administration moves to end union rights at many federal agencies

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday evening abolishing union rights at more than two dozen federal agencies and offices, in a major expansion of the administration’s efforts to shrink the federal government.

The White House cited national security concerns for terminating workers’ ability to bargain collectively, but the order applies at agencies with both direct and indirect links to national security. Those include the entirety of the departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, State and Justice, and parts of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Interior, Energy and Commerce, among others.

“President Trump is taking action to ensure that agencies vital to national security can execute their missions without delay and protect the American people,” the White House said in a fact sheet accompanying the memo.

Hours later, eight federal agencies sued a group of unions in federal court in Texas, asking a judge to declare their union contracts void under Trump’s executive order. For now the contracts remain in place, but their fate lays in the hands of a Trump appointed judge.

The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal workers’ union representing more than 800,000 members, estimates hundreds of thousands of federal workers could lose union rights under the order and has pledged to take immediate legal action, alongside other unions. The unions had not filed lawsuits as of Friday evening.

Public sector unions represent about 1.25 million workers in the federal government’s 2.3-million-person bureaucracy, according to Labor Department data.

Those unions have been aggressive in fighting efforts by the U.S. DOGE Service, led by billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk, to cut federal spending and shed government workers, bringing lawsuits in courts that have halted plans to fire employees.

Labor experts said Trump’s order marks a significant escalation in the administration’s campaign to remake the federal workforce, a drive that began on Trump’s first day in office with an order ending remote work.

AFGE President Everett Kelley slammed Trump’s order in a statement, calling it “a disgraceful and retaliatory attack on the rights of hundreds of thousands of patriotic American civil servants.”

Liz Shuler, president of AFL-CIO, the country’s largest federation of labor unions, issued a statement denouncing the order as “the very definition of union-busting” and “straight out of Project 2025,” referring to a document prepared by a conservative think tank that laid out many of the strategies Trump’s aides have followed .

Project 2025’s authors argued public-sector unions are viewed as “incompatible with democracy” and “constitutional government,” saying “it is hard to avoid reaching the same conclusion” and calling on Congress to consider whether they are “appropriate.”

Democratic Party leaders lambasted the order Friday, with DNC Chair Ken Martin calling Trump “the most anti-worker president I’ve seen in my lifetime.”

Trump invoked his authority under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 to cancel the union contracts, taking a sweeping view of what constitutes national security. The administration moved to end union rights for workers at the Treasury Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Science Foundation, among other s.

The order excluded police and firefighter unions. Law enforcement unions were the only ones that endorsed Trump in the 2024 election.

“This is political. In all of his memos, Trump exempts law enforcement,” said Cathy Creighton, director of Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations Buffalo Co-Lab. “If anything applies to national security, it’s law enforcement, but he’s catering to his base.”

Unions have filed a barrage of lawsuits against the administration in recent weeks for firing tens of thousands of probationary workers. Those suits resulted in temporary relief for some workers, but many probationary federal workers who have been laid off or placed on administrative leave are in limbo as lawsuits move their way through the federal court system. A federal judge in Maryland indicated Wednesday that he may limit an earlier ruling that required the administration to rehire nearly 25,000 probationary workers.

The order appears aimed at stripping federal unions of the power that has allowed them to challenge the administration – by shrinking their membership and hitting their financial resources by cutting off their union dues. Carla Katz, a professor at Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, called Trump’s order “plainly retaliatory.”

“This is a magnitude of tenfold on what they’ve done so far on their attack of the federal workforce and the labor movement,” Creighton said. “They’re saying you have no union. Period.”

Sharda Fornnarino, a nurse at the Denver VA hospital and a National Nurses United union official, called the order “a slap in the face.”

“We took care of patients through the pandemic, and now we’re considered a threat to national security. It’s a complete farce,” said Fornnarino, a 25-year nurse and veteran.

The administration is shoring up reduction-in-force plans that could see agencies cut between 8 and 50 percent of their employees. Musk and his allies defended their efforts in a Fox News interview Thursday, saying that their goal was to help the American people.

Federal workers already have limited union rights compared with other employees; they cannot strike or bargain over pay. These concessions are enshrined in law with the intention of creating a workforce that operates in service of the country, said Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that advocates for an effective government and federal workforce.

“Federal employees in general give up a lot to serve the public,” he added. “It’s a special set of restrictions that you are signing up for.”

But Congress, during President Jimmy Carter’s administration, struck a balance by allowing federal workers to join unions and bargain collectively – protections meant to ensure that employees are treated fairly while banning activity that could be disruptive to services to the public or prove a threat to national security.

The litigation by government agencies against federal unions Thursday night, in conjunction with Trump’s order, was almost a mirror image of the court cases the unions have been bringing.

The agencies appeared to have coordinated with the White House on the timing of their lawsuit Thursday evening, getting the case swiftly filed in a favorable court before unions had a chance to sue elsewhere to block it. They brought the case in the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas, where the sole judge, Alan D. Albright, a Trump appointee, hears all of the civil and criminal cases. The move to file the lawsuit in Waco comes as lawmakers and legal experts raise concerns about judge-shopping, the practice of filing a lawsuit in a carefully chosen court where the judge is most likely to rule in the plaintiff’s favor.