MAGA

On Wednesday, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced it was cancelling union contracts for most of its staff, a move that stripped some 350,000 VA employees of worker protections, according to Pete Kasperowicz, the VA press secretary. Only union contracts for around 4,000 police, firefighters and security guards remain in place, the VA said.

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On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency also terminated its union contracts for at least 8,000 union members. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have canceled their collective bargaining agreements, too.

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These moves came after Trump in March signed an executive order terminating collective bargaining for federal workers under the guise of national security concerns.

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Trump’s executive order was promptly tied up in litigation. A lawsuit from six unions including the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) argued Trump’s executive order was retaliatory because it selectively ended union participation for some agencies while maintaining them for others. The coalition won an injunction from a U.S. District judge for the Northern District of California in June, but, on Aug. 1, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the administration’s order “on its face… does not express any retaliatory animus.” (The panel was made up of two Trump appointees and one Obama appointee.)

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These federal workers have now lost important worker protections that prevent them from falling victim to arbitrary firing and job loss.

Since returning to office in January, more than 150,000 federal employees accepted early resignation offers and left the government workforce. At least 51,000 more have been fired or targeted for layoffs according to a CNN analysis that was last updated in mid-July. Federal union leaders allege Trump is retaliating against the unions, who have been on the frontlines of Trump’s war on the civil service, often suing to protect jobs the administration sought to cut. With the appeals court ruling, the administration is now cleared to target some 950,000 total employees represented by federal unions at nearly two dozen agencies.

  TPM

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