IBEW: Trump’s anti-union EOs target unions expressly protected by law

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers last week sued the Trump administration over its executive orders aimed at stripping two-thirds of the federal workforce of their collective bargaining rights, arguing that its bargaining units at the Energy and Interior departments are expressly protected by law.

Earlier this year, President Trump signed a pair of executive orders citing a seldom-utilized provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to declare wide swathes of the federal government as primarily engaged in national security work and banning most unions there. Federal employee unions have since been engaged in court battle across half a dozen legal challenges, contending the edicts constitute violations of employees’ First and Fifth Amendment rights, among other charges.

In addition to those arguments, IBEW’s suit, filed last week in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that the administration’s effort to oust them from three agencies—the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation and the Energy Department’s Southwestern Power Agency and Western Area Power Administration—must fail because the blue collar workers there are exempt from the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act’s collective bargaining provisions.

When Congress crafted the law in 1978, it specifically exempted some blue-collar jobs from the new rules governing collective bargaining, including the national security determination at issue now as well as provisions banning most federal worker unions from bargaining over pay. That’s because the bargaining status of those workforces already was codified in the 1972 Government Employees Prevailing Rate Systems Act, and to better compete with the private sector for skilled trades workers.

“Within the framework of the CSRA, Congress recognized the need to preserve the pre-existing collective bargaining rights of certain federal prevailing rate employees who engage in jobs that are essential to the security and stability of the nation’s infrastructure,” the union wrote. “Accordingly, Congress enacted Section 704 of the CSRA, which protects the right of these employees to bargain collectively with agencies about terms and conditions of employment and other employment benefits regardless of any provision of Chapter 71 [of Title 5], including [the national security determination].”

A 1980 Federal Labor Relations Authority decision cites Congress’ conference committee that ironed out the final iteration of the Civil Service Reform Act, confirming that lawmakers expressly sought to preserve collective bargaining for the employees at these three agencies.

“As revised, Section 704 overrules the decision of the comptroller general . . . relating to certain negotiated contracts applicable to employees under the Department of the Interior and the Department of Energy,” the conference committee wrote. “This section also provides specific statutory authorization for the negotiation of wages, terms and conditions of employment and other employment benefits traditionally negotiated by these employees in accordance with prevailing practices in the private sector of the economy.”

The union noted that a July memo from WAPA Administrator and CEO Tracey LeBeau to Energy Secretary Chris Wright agreed with the union, urging Wright to greenlight negotiations with IBEW over pay increases and other issues.

“The WAPA memo explicitly states: ‘It is WAPA’s position that it may continue to collectively bargain wages and other working conditions under Section 704’ and requests that DOE ‘approve WAPA’s request to bargain with IBEW on unit pay adjustments and working conditions,’” the lawsuit states. “WAPA also advised the DOE that the inability to bargain over subject matters protected by Section 704 could lead to ‘significant losses of skilled labor’ that ‘potentially put the [high voltage power] grid at risk and degrade the [DOE’s] ability to meet public safety and national security interests, as well as execute on the administration’s energy agenda.”