With this decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has endorsed President Donald Trump’s regulatory rollback. Today’s order brings an end to union bargaining for hundreds of thousands of federal workers. This development affects about three quarters of the nearly 1 million federal workers covered by collective bargaining agreements.
It’s not too surprising given that back in March, Trump signed an executive order. It used national security concerns as a pretext to exempt more than a dozen federal agencies from any obligations to negotiate in good faith with unions. The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) is the exclusive representative of approximately 160,000 federal employees. They argue that this order has an impact on approximately 100,000 of their members. The union has claimed that the order infringes on federal workers’ labor rights and is unconstitutional.
On April 25, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman issued an immediate injunction that put a stop to the administration’s enforcement of Trump’s order. A 2-1 panel from the appeals court’s stay put this injunction on hold just last month. The court’s majority found that NTEU had not demonstrated that it would suffer the type of irreparable harm necessary to maintain the injunction. Therefore, they chose not to keep it.
The appeals court’s ruling reflects a broader legal context surrounding Trump’s actions. The administration announced it was filing separate suits to invalidate existing union contracts that affect thousands of federal workers. This new front in the legal war on labor unions only increases the already substantial friction between the federal government and organized labor.
“Preserving the President’s autonomy under a statute that expressly recognizes his national-security expertise is within the public interest.” – U.S. Court of Appeals
The appeals court’s ruling has been blasted by the city’s union leaders. NTEU representatives contend that Trump’s frequent recourse to generalizations about national security erodes workers’ rights. U.S. Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs, nominated last month to the Supreme Court, addressed this response directly. She blasted several of the union’s claims as “vague assertions.”
Analysis of this ruling shows that if effective, this ruling might dramatically change the fate of labor relations in the federal workforce. The Trump administration is equally dug in on the left on union negotiations and national security. In return, the NTEU and other labor organizations will increasingly move to challenge these orders on a variety of grounds in order to halt their enforcement.