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Federal Workers

It’s Open Season On Public Sector Workers

November 5, 2025 Les Leopold, Scheer Post. , , ,
First Trump and Musk take a chainsaw to their ranks, then the Democrats, in effect, lock out those who still have jobs. Approximately 100,000 government employees have lost their jobs since Trump took over. If that wasn’t bad enough, now the Democrats, trying to show that they really aren’t wimps, have shut down the government. Seven hundred and thirty thousand public sector employees are working without pay while another 670,000 have been furloughed. Working people of all shades, shapes, and sizes are suffering collateral damage.

Federal Workers Support Shutdown Fight

October 2, 2025 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. , , , ,
A coalition of unions in the federal sector signed on to an extraordinary Federal Unionists Network letter September 29 urging the Democrats to fight Trump administration cuts, even at the price of a government shutdown. It was titled “No Bad Budget in Our Name,” and signers represent tens of thousands of federal workers. Now that the shutdown has started, FUN is organizing a response among federal unionists, stating: “This is much more than a fight between branches of government or political parties. This government shutdown is a showdown between the public and the billionaires.” “[They’re] using a shutdown as a threat to pressure Congress to pass a budget that impacts our most vulnerable, including seniors, rural communities, hungry children and cuts out access to healthcare for millions of Americans,” said FUN Co-Executive Director Alyssa Taft.

About The Lincoln Declaration

September 26, 2025 Suzanne Gordon, Substack. , , ,
Early on the morning of Wednesday September 25th, a group of courageous physicians and other healthcare workers who have devoted their careers to the care of the nation’s veterans sent a letter of concern and protest to the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the VA’s Inspector General and key members of Congress like those who serve on the Senate and House Committees for Veterans Affairs. The letter, which was signed by over 170 VA staff – some who put their names down and some who signed anonymously – was titled “The Lincoln Declaration: a Letter of Concern about the Future of Veterans’ Healthcare.” It’s title was taken– as is the VA’s mission –from Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address when, towards the end of the Civil War he promised that the nation would “care for those who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.”

Federal Workers Declare Five-Alarm Fires At Agencies

September 25, 2025 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. , , ,
Braving retaliation, thousands of federal workers across six agencies have signed open letters charging that their workplaces are being hamstrung or dismantled by the Trump administration. They join federal unionists at dozens more workplaces who have been sounding the alarm to Congress and the public. When deadly flooding in central Texas killed 135 people in July, “FEMA’s mission to provide critical support was obstructed by leadership who not only question the agency’s existence but place uninformed cost-cutting above serving the American people,” wrote 155 Federal Emergency Management Agency workers on August 25. A third of FEMA’s staff were either fired or have resigned so far this year.

FEMA Employees Who Signed Dissent Letter Put On Leave

August 27, 2025 Sarah Fortinsky, The Hill. , , ,
Employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were placed on leave on Tuesday after signing their names to a public letter criticizing the agency’s leadership, according to a group that helped facilitate the letter’s publication. More than 180 current and former FEMA staffers signed a public letter warning that the Trump administration is weakening the disaster response agency’s capacity and preventing it from carrying out its mission. Thirty-six staffers signed their names, the group told The Hill, while others signed anonymously. The letter was published online by the group Stand Up for Science but was addressed to the FEMA Review Council, which the Trump administration set up to explore ways to reform the agency. It also was sent to various congressional committees.

Court Ruling Clears The Way For Hundreds Of CDC Staff To Be Laid Off

August 25, 2025 Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, Truthout. , , , ,
Hundreds of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employees are losing their jobs after a federal judge ruled on August 12 that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was barred from terminating employees at only six CDC divisions. The court’s prior ruling had protected all CDC staff. The litigation stems from HHS Director Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s efforts to terminate thousands of HHS employees. In March, Kennedy announced that 10,000 of the department’s workers would be laid off, including 2,400 staff from the CDC. Kennedy, who has long peddled health disinformation to the public, has made numerous false claims about vaccines, COVID-19, chronic diseases, and autism.

Worker Protection Agency Ditches Judges For Trump Administration

August 20, 2025 Dave Jamieson, Portside. , , ,
A small but essential federal agency plans to get rid of its judges who help resolve government workplace disputes, a move unions say will consolidate more power among President Donald Trump’s political appointees and weaken the collective-bargaining system. The Federal Labor Relations Authority has told Congress it will eliminate its administrative law judges as part of a reorganization scheme to comply with the Trump administration’s cost-cutting orders. The judges conduct hearings involving unlawful firings and union contract violations, and issue decisions that can be reviewed by the authority’s three presidentially appointed members.

Union-Busting In The Guise Of ‘National Security’

August 12, 2025 Steve Wishnia, Work Bites. , , , , ,
In a ruling the American Federation of Government Employees [AFGE] denounced as “a setback for fundamental rights in America,” a federal appeals court in California on August 1 lifted an injunction preventing the Trump regime from terminating collective-bargaining rights for an estimated two-thirds of the federal workforce. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the argument by six federal workers unions against Trump’s March 27 executive order nullifying their contracts—that it was retaliation for their exercising their right to dispute policies such as massive layoffs—was irrelevant, because “the President would have taken the same action even in the absence of the protected conduct.” 

A Spark Of Hope From Scrappy Federal Workers

August 8, 2025 Hadas Thier, Hammer and Hope. , , ,
I guess it’s gotten to me after all,” Russ Schafer conceded, gesturing toward his involuntarily shaking hand. Schafer, who requested a pseudonym in order to avoid workplace retaliation, has worked at the Environmental Protection Agency for more than 20 years. He’s trying to hold on to his job and refused “the fork” — the voluntary resignations pushed by the Trump administration in February, so-called because the subject line of the email to federal employees, “Fork in the Road,” was nearly the same as one sent to Twitter employees in 2022 by the company’s then-new owner, Elon Musk. “I’m just unwilling to walk away from my work. It’ll take a much bigger bribe to get me to give up on that,” Schafer told me.

EPA Workers Investigated For Defending Its Mission

July 11, 2025 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. , , ,
After signing a critical letter to their boss, 139 EPA workers were put under investigation and on a 2-week paid administrative leave July 3. The workers wrote to EPA administrator Lee Zeldin that the mission of their agency is being undermined by the Trump administration’s actions and asked Zeldin to back away from “harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA actions, and disregard for scientific expertise” and re-commit “to his oath to protect the health of the American people and our environment.” Under Zeldin, the EPA is reconsidering bans on asbestos, weakening rules on mercury, and extending deadlines to remove cancer-causing chemicals from drinking water.

Elon Musk Steps Down From DOGE

June 1, 2025 People's Dispatch. , , , ,
The world’s richest man has just stepped down from his position leading a federal government task-force responsible for gutting large portions of the federal government. In a send-off press conference held in the Oval Office on Friday, May 30, Elon Musk received glowing praise from Trump himself. Trump handed Musk an ostentatious golden key to the president’s office after praising the billionaire as “one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced,” who has “worked tirelessly helping lead the most sweeping and consequential government reform program in generations.”

How Federal Workers Without A Union Can Still Act Like A Union

May 10, 2025 Colin Smalley, Labor Notes. , , , ,
The reality for over 1.3 million federal government workers leading up to the second Trump Administration has been collective bargaining through unions recognized by the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA). This recognition comes with the right to bargain over working conditions and conditions of employment. It also includes an individual right to representation when the boss is asking questions that could lead to discipline. However, for a majority of these workers, Trump’s Executive Order 14251 strips those rights in the name of “national security.” These workers, myself and my union included, are now faced with a scenario that’s been all too common.

Unpacking Trump’s Attack On Federal Sector Unions

April 30, 2025 Nicholas Handler, Portside. , , ,
On March 28, President Trump issued an executive order purporting to bar federal workers at dozens of federal agencies and subdivisions from joining labor unions or entering into collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) with the federal government. Initial reporting suggests that the order could strip two-thirds of unionized federal workforce, or nearly 700,000 civil servants, of their collective bargaining rights. Following the issuance of the order, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a memorandum directing the named agencies to implement the president’s directive, which presumably will include the termination of any collective bargaining agreements and a refusal to recognize existing unions.

PATCO’s Lessons For This Crisis

April 10, 2025 Joseph A. McCartin, Labor Notes. , , , ,
Donald Trump’s March 27 executive order revoking the collective bargaining rights of more than 700,000 federal workers is the largest act of union-busting in U.S. history. The closest historical parallel is Ronald Reagan’s busting and decertification of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. When 12,000 air traffic controllers initiated an illegal strike on August 3, 1981, and stayed out in defiance of Reagan’s ultimatum, the federal government came down on them with all its might. Many PATCO leaders were arrested, the union was bankrupted and decertified, and the strikers were permanently replaced and banned for life from returning to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Federal Unionists Say It’s Not Game Over, It’s Game On

April 5, 2025 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. , , ,
A scrappy network of federal unionists is leading the response to the Trump administration’s attacks on their workplaces, including Trump’s March 27 order purporting to end union contracts covering most federal workers. Where the Federal Unionists Network has led, union leaders have followed. In a Zoom event that drew 65,000 viewers, FUN got official support from all the significant federal unions for their bottom-up organizing approach to the Trump onslaught. Federal worker unions are in the crosshairs because they are defending the jobs and agencies that Trump and Elon Musk have been trying to eliminate by illegally bypassing Congress and violating laws governing federal employment.
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