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Federal collective bargaining is in the U.S. national interest
COMMENTARY | The president's recent executive orders on collective bargaining are a solution in search of a problem, and without a solid premise to stand on.
While we come from different sides of the federal bargaining table—one a Democrat and former union president, and one a long-time management advocate at that table, as well as a political appointee in the first Trump administration—we both support collective bargaining in the federal sector because we believe in it. Without question, it is the most effective workplace problem-solving mechanism devised by our government.
Why do we need to say this now, on Labor Day 2025? Because we believe that (a) our country has enough problems to deal with, most of which require some sort of government involvement, and (b) we believe that federal unions and the frontline federal civil servants they represent are critical to solving those problems. They contribute to the health of our republic and our government. However, those civil servants have come under furious, unjustified assault by the Trump Administration, in part by two recent actions by the president.
First, President Trump’s Executive Order 14251, issued on March 27 of this year, banned 75% of federal employees currently covered by collective bargaining agreements, ostensibly on the grounds that such bargaining—particularly by “hostile” federal employee unions—undermines our national security. And second, in a separate presidential memorandum, POTUS banned those same employees from voluntarily having their union dues deducted from their agency paychecks and remitted to their unions, making it much more difficult for those unions to acquire the financial resources necessary to effectively engage in collective bargaining.
We must also note that President Trump, in an ironic effort to “commemorate” this Labor Day, just moved on Aug. 27 to exclude even more federal agencies from collective bargaining on these very same “national security” grounds, but the points we make herein remain valid: That is, if POTUS and/or an agency head he has appointed feels that collective bargaining with a federal union has somehow impacted national security, far more precise procedures already exist in current law to raise and adjudicate that concern.
But we believe that President Trump, whether with his past and most recent actions, has failed to provide a convincing rationale for the twin bans, and as a consequence, he should rescind them both, so that our frontline colleagues, those who represent the interests of federal agencies and their employees, can get on with the difficult business of resolving workplace disputes.
Executive Order 14251 simply fails to make a case
Here’s our rationale. Executive Order 14251, cited above, as well as his more recent Aug. 27 order, lists those agencies that POTUS has now declared as having “...as their primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work” as enumerated in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act’s title VII, the Federal Labor Management Relations Statute. And the vast majority of those agencies currently have collective bargaining agreements with the unions representing their employees.
Thus, despite literally decades to the contrary—with workplace disputes effectively resolved via the CSRA—the president’s order would preclude employees in cabinet departments and executive agencies from Commerce to Agriculture and Labor to Veterans Affairs from participating in collective bargaining, including the likes of VA nurses, Social Security claims examiners, IRS customer service representatives, National Park Service rangers, analysts with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and more. Why? Because POTUS asserts that bargaining over their terms and conditions of employment (just as their private sector counterparts and even their contractors do), would allegedly impact our national security.
But neither the EO and its accompanying fact sheet, nor the president’s most recent action, explain how those federal employees, all currently represented by labor organizations, fit the national security criteria in existing law. In our view, a president’s bare and bold declaration that the criterion is applicable, made without any explanation whatsoever, is not convincing enough to supersede that law. We also note that employees in the CIA, National Security Agency and FBI, whose position descriptions describe their national security work, have been validly excluded from participating in collective bargaining for years, by President Carter’s 1979 Executive Order 11271.
Interestingly, those federal employees who may actually impact national security—such as law enforcement officers like uniformed Border Protection personnel in the Department of Homeland Security, whose union has been a strong and vocal supporter of President Trump—are not covered by any such national security exclusion. So says the fact sheet accompanying EO 14251. Why are those employees allowed to bargain and VA nurses, CDC analysts, IRS customer service representatives, etc., are not?
The president’s executive orders are a solution in search of a problem.
The 1978 CSRA already provides two complementary procedures to prevent “national security” from invading the sphere of federal collective bargaining.
First, if an agency believes that a union proposal directly or indirectly impedes national security, it can declare that proposal “non-negotiable” and thereafter, it can simply refuse to bargain any further on that proposal. If the union disagrees with that agency’s non-negotiability determination, it can file a negotiability appeal with the Federal Labor Relations Authority, an agency established by the 1978 CSRA, and have it adjudicated. And if it loses, it may appeal to the federal courts.
Moreover, if there’s a national security exigency, Section 7106(a)(2)(D) of that same 1978 CSRA states an agency may “take any actions that may be necessary to carry out the agency mission in the case of an emergency,” including superseding the terms of an existing collective bargaining agreement. Thus, if an unexpected but bona fide national security issue emerges and impedes an agency’s operation because of its collective bargaining obligations, that agency can declare an emergency and act.
But the president’s orders cite no specific national security threat or incident, past, present or future. Thus, they are unnecessary.
Potential “inconvenience” is not enough to abolish federal collective bargaining
The White House’s fact sheet accompanying EO 14251 states “The CSRA enables hostile Federal unions to obstruct agency management” (emphasis added), and it points to an agency’s inability to unilaterally open existing collective bargaining agreements or to implement midterm changes until that midterm bargaining is completed. It also points to the fact that “the largest Federal union is wildly filing grievances” in an effort to thwart the administration’s agenda. To us that sounds like the give-and-take of a normal collective bargaining relationship, one that Congress has long concluded is in the national interest, first in the U.S. private sector and subsequently, in the U.S. federal government.
A bit of history is in order here. Congress first sanctioned collective bargaining in the private sector with the 1935 Wagner Act because it “encourage(d) practices fundamental to the friendly adjustment of industrial disputes.” President Kennedy later applied that same rationale to the federal sector in 1962 when he signed Executive Order 10988, and President Nixon reaffirmed it in Executive Order 11491 in 1971. Those executive orders—as well as their rationale and their adjudicatory model—were subsequently codified in federal law by a bipartisan Congress in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, which included the Federal Labor-Management Relations Statute as its Title VII.
In so doing, that bipartisan Congress passed the CSRA by a vote of 85 to 1 in the Senate and 365 to 8 in the House, declaring that “...experience in both private and public employment indicates that the statutory protection of the right of employees to organize, bargain collectively, and participate through labor organizations...safeguards the public interest... contributes to the effective conduct of public business, and facilitates and encourages the amicable settlements of disputes...therefore, labor organizations and collective bargaining in the civil service are in the public interest.”
Congress was fully aware of what it was doing. Their action then and now represents literally decades of unequivocal support for the push and pull and give and take of collective bargaining. While federal unions may “frustrate” agencies and delay this or any president’s agenda in a non-emergency situation, that frustration is not a justification for extinguishing the right of federal employees to bargain in the federal sector and thereby ignore the public interest that that bargaining serves.
Workplace disputes will still be resolved, no matter what
The reality is that the federal collective bargaining has been supported by every presidential administration, Republican and Democrat, since 1978, save one. For example, presidents from John F. Kennedy to George H.W., Bush supported traditional collective bargaining, and while President Clinton ordered agencies to take a more collaborative approach, as did President Obama, intervening Republican presidents swung the pendulum back to a more traditional model, including President Trump in his first term. However, the current POTUS would go further and eliminate that process altogether, under the guise of ‘national security.’
But we fear that President Trump’s actions, which abolish collective bargaining in most of the federal government because “it cannot be applied...in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations,” together with President Trump’s willingness to discharge any federal manager or union leader who fails to follow his policy, will discourage all such contact between political appointees and/or career federal officials and union representatives. All of the benefits of collective bargaining in the federal government will cease. And that is bad.
Bottom line: The actions of the Trump Administration are unnecessary, unjustified and not in the public interest. They should be rescinded, either by the president himself and/or by the Congress.
Both Robert Tobias and Ron Sanders are elected Fellows of the National Academy of Public Administration. Sanders, a civil servant for almost 40 years (over 20 as a member of the Senior Executive Service), served as director of civilian personnel for the Defense Department, chief human resources officer for IRS—where he first met Robert Tobias—and associate director for HR strategy at OPM, as well as the chair of the Federal Salary Council in the first Trump Administration. Tobias is the former National President of the National Treasury Employees Union, where among other things, he served as the "voice’"of over 90,000 IRS employees; he has also been a longtime leader and commentator on the federal labor movement.