
President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House on Aug. 26, 2025. Trump issued a new executive order ending collective bargaining at additional agencies. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
A fresh executive order aims to ban unions at more federal agencies
A new edict published alongside President Trump’s proclamation celebrating Labor Day seeks to outlaw collective bargaining at more than half a dozen additional agencies under the auspices of “national security.”
This story has been updated at 7:10 p.m. ET.
President Trump on Thursday signed a new executive order targeting unions at more than half a dozen agencies, again under the auspices of national security.
The edict, which was published within minutes of Trump’s proclamation marking Monday’s Labor Day holiday, appends a March edict that seeks to outlaw collective bargaining for two-thirds of the federal workforce, citing a seldom-used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act allowing the president to exclude agencies from federal labor law if the law “cannot be applied to that agency or subdivision in a manner consistent with national security requirements.”
Thursday’s order would ban collective bargaining at the International Trade Administration and the Patent and Trademark Office within the Commerce Department; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service and the National Weather Service; as well as NASA and the U.S. Agency for Global Media. It states that all these agencies “have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative or national security work.”
Matt Biggs, national president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, whose union represents a portion of NASA’s workforce along with the American Federation of Government Employees, suggested that the administration's targeting of NASA—IFPTE's largest union—was in retaliation for its own lawsuit challenging the Spring iteration of the executive order, filed last month.
“It’s not surprising, sadly,” Biggs said. “What is surprising is that on the eve of Labor Day weekend, when workers are to be celebrated, the Trump administration has doubled down on being the most anti-labor, anti-worker administration in U.S. history. We will continue to fight in the courts, on the Hill and at the grassroots levels against this.”
The targeting of additional agencies and their respective unions comes as the Trump administration has begun formally terminating collective bargaining agreements at more than half a dozen agencies, despite assuring federal judges that such a step wouldn’t be taken until the conclusion of litigation surrounding the executive order. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals this week signaled that it will consider reversing a prior decision to allow the edict to go into effect.
AFGE National President Everett Kelley in a statement described the move as "abhorrent," particularly since NASA and the National Weather Service both have undergone reductions in force.
"President Trump’s decision to issue a Labor Day proclamation shortly after stripping union rights from thousands of civil servants, a third of whom are veterans, should show American workers what he really thinks about them," Kelley said. “This latest executive order is another clear example of retaliation against federal employee union members who have bravely stood up against his anti-worker, anti-American plan to dismantle the federal government."
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