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Federal Employees

Federal Unions Battle Trump’s Attempt To Muzzle Federal Workers

June 6, 2026 Mark Gruenberg, People's World. , , ,
That’s President Donald Trump’s message to the remaining two million federal employees who work for the government he has continued to shred since his election to a second term. Not content with firing at least 317,000 federal workers and trashing more than 30 of their union contracts, Trump wants to shut the rest up by forcing each of them—and future workers, too—to sign non-disclosure agreements. The reaction from three top federal worker unions—the Government Employees (AFGE), the Treasury Workers (NTEU), and the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), a Machinists sector—is clear: It’s illegal under labor law governing federal workers and their boss-worker relations, and it’s unconstitutional, too.

Trump’s Attack On Science Escalates With Firing Of National Science Board

May 8, 2026 Sasha Abramsky, Truthout. , , ,
Over the last few weeks, the Trump administration’s relentless war on the U.S.’s scientific infrastructure has picked up speed. The New York Times’s Lisa Friedman reported in late April that over the past months, more than 1,500 top scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research and Development have either been laid off, pushed into early retirement, or reassigned to desk jobs that have nothing to do with their field of expertise. Friedman’s article referenced a medical doctor with a specialty in lung disease being reassigned to a financial job and an epidemiologist being moved over to a job issuing permits for handling hazardous waste.

TSA Is On A Brown-Bag Strike And Is Crippling Airports

March 26, 2026 Chris Brooks, Jacobin Magazine. , , , ,
Federal laws prohibit strikes by federal workers and can be extremely punitive. Federal workers who strike can face a felony prosecution, time in prison, and fines of thousands of dollars. In fact, if you are a federal worker, you can be officially blacklisted from working for the federal government just for claiming you have the right to strike or even for being a member of a union that makes that claim. To win real collective bargaining rights, federal workers had to directly face off against these constraints. It’s hard to imagine today, but there was a massive wave of public sector strikes in the 1960s and 1970s.

Federal Worker Unions Vow To Fight Pro-Trump Court Ruling

March 13, 2026 Press Associates, People's World. , , ,
San Francisco — Two top federal worker unions, the Government Employees (AFGE) and the Treasury Employees (NTEU), are vowing to fight on for their collective bargaining agreements and rights despite a pro-Trump federal appeals court ruling tossing most of those contracts out. But AFGE, led by President Everett Kelley, and NTEU, headed by President Doreen Greenwald, still are hashing out what their next legal moves will be. The need for further struggles occurs because on March 5 a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a prior lower-court pro-union ruling.

New Rule Moves US Government Closer To Creating A Trump State

February 17, 2026 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , ,
On February 6, President Donald Trump's administration took a major step toward transforming the merit system for civil service employees so that it functions more like a “patronage spoils system.” If successful, the administration would effectively establish a Trump state that could influence or undermine government well beyond Trump's current term. It would also effectively complete a project that President Richard Nixon failed to accomplish because of Watergate. Trump’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) finalized its “Schedule Policy/Career” (Schedule P/C) rule so that the administration may reclassify tens of thousands of jobs as "policy-influencing positions" and fire those employees at will if they are not politically or personally loyal to the administration. 

EPA Employees Send ‘Declaration Of Dissent’ Over Policies Under Trump

June 30, 2025 Melina Walling, AP News. , , ,
A group of Environmental Protection Agency employees on Monday published a declaration of dissent from the agency’s policies under the Trump administration, saying they “undermine the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment.” More than 170 EPA employees put their names to the document, with about 100 more signing anonymously out of fear of retaliation, according to Jeremy Berg, a former editor-in-chief of Science magazine who is not an EPA employee but was among non-EPA scientists or academics to also sign. The latter figure includes 20 Nobel laureates.

Most (But Not All) VA Workers Lose Union Bargaining Rights

May 6, 2025 Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon, Popular Resistance. , , , ,
When President Trump’s cabinet picks trooped up to Capitol Hill earlier this year for Senate confirmation hearings, hardly any boasted about their past union connections. But Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins did. He helped win broad bipartisan approval for his nomination from a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee (SVAC) that includes Bernie Sanders (I-VT) by mentioning that he belonged to the United Food and Commercial workers, while working for five years at a Georgia grocery store chain. Said Collins: “I believe that the employees of the VA, whether they’re union or not, are very valuable and I respect that… I get the issue.”

New Orleans Marches To Defend Federal And Public Sector Workers

March 25, 2025 Fight Back! News. , , , ,
New Orleans, LA – On Saturday, March 22, over 100 New Orleanians gathered at Congo Square downtown for a march to fight against Trump’s attacks on federal workers. The demonstration brought together at least ten different unions across the city in coalition with community organizations, building a broad united front against Trump’s attacks on labor. “I’ve been a labor activist in this city for a few years and this is the fastest I’ve seen unions endorse anything. People are riled up and ready to fight,” said Abbey Lodwig, one of the march organizers and member of the Association of Flight Attendants union.

We’re Seeing The Beginnings Of Mass Noncompliance

March 2, 2025 Daniel Hunter, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
The dynamics of this administrative coup are taking shape. Trump whisperer Steve Bannon has called the approach “muzzle velocity” and “flood the zone.” It has been relentless and already there are countless losses for the American people. The aim of flood the zone is to move at such speed that it’s impossible to organize — and that resistance efforts are constantly distracted by the latest news and in constant disarray. For the first several weeks this strategy worked and was virtually unchecked and largely unchallenged. That’s been stage one: shock.

Federal Workers Organize Against Billionaire Power Grab

February 15, 2025 Joe DeManuelle-Hall, Labor Notes. , , , ,
The second Trump administration has the federal workforce in its crosshairs. Spearheading the effort is Elon Musk (the richest man in the world) and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (not actually a government department). Trump and Musk have taken a shotgun-blast approach: instituting a hiring freeze, shutting down whole agencies, telling workers to stop coming in, offering buyouts to 2 million workers, ordering remote workers back to the office in violation of union contracts, and mass-firing workers still in their probationary periods.

Government Workers Rally To Send Fightback Message To Trump

February 15, 2025 Kermit Leibensperger, Workers.org. , , ,
Hundreds of government workers and their allies held a rally on Feb. 11 on the northside of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. The focus of the rally was to protest the forced buyout of thousands of federal workers directed by Donald Trump’s executive order following his second inauguration on Jan. 20.  According to CNN, thousands of probationary federal workers have had their jobs terminated as of February 13. These workers, many of them members of the American Federation of Government Employees, are employed by various governmental agencies, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, Social Security Administration, Department of Justice, Transportation Security Agency, Department of Energy, Department of Education and more.

Utah’s Anti-Union Bill Sparks Outcry As Labor Movement Fights Back

February 15, 2025 Devin B. Martinez, People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
A controversial bill in the US state of Utah, HB 267, is making its way through the state legislature, sparking intense debate and widespread opposition.  If signed into law, the bill would make it illegal for any federal agency in Utah to recognize labor unions or engage in collective bargaining with their employees. This sweeping measure would impact thousands of workers, including teachers, health care workers, emergency responders, and a variety of other workers employed by federal agencies. Many federal employees rely on unions to fight for fair wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Trump Administration Sued Over Order For Firing Federal Workers

January 23, 2025 Michael Sainato, Portside. , , ,
One day after Donald Trump returned to office, a leading government labor union filed a lawsuit against his administration’s reclassification of thousands of federal workers as political hires. An executive order signed by the president – making public sector workers easier to fire – amounts to a “dangerous step backward”, according to the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents federal government employees across 37 agencies and departments. The move, one of several actions announced by Trump in the hours after his inauguration on Monday, was swiftly criticized as an attack on workers.

Statement Of US Government Officials Who Resigned Over Policy Toward Gaza, Palestine And Israel

July 4, 2024 Open Letter, Popular Resistance. , , , ,
We are former U.S. Government Officials who resigned from our respective positions over the last nine months due to our grave concerns with current U.S. policy towards the crisis in Gaza, and U.S. policies and practices towards Palestine and Israel more broadly. We are subject matter experts representing the interagency, and are a multifaith and multiethnic community of professionals and patriots dedicated to the service of the United States of America, its people, and its values. Whether in the civil service, foreign service, armed forces, or as political appointees, each of us has sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and as our nation celebrates its Independence Day, each of us are reminded that we resigned from government not to terminate that oath but to continue to abide by it; not to end our commitment to service, but to extend it.

Biden Staffers Demand Cease-Fire At ‘Historic’ White House Vigil

December 15, 2023 Jake Johnson, Common Dreams. , , , , , , ,
Dozens of Biden administration staffers held a vigil outside the White House late Wednesday calling for a lasting cease-fire in Gaza as the Palestinian territory's healthcare system collapsed and the U.S.-armed Israeli military bombed the entirety of the besieged strip. The staffers donned masks and sunglasses to conceal their identities, likely out of fear of retaliation from an administration that has been accused of cracking down on dissent against President Joe Biden's support for Israel's assault on Gaza.
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