By Daniel Weissner and Nate Raymond
()- A federal judge halted President Donald Trump’s administration from ending collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of federal employees on Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco sided with the American Federation of Government Employees and other labor unions, stating that President Trump’s March 27 executive order, which allowed numerous federal agencies to avoid negotiating with unions, was probably unlawful.
Donato prevented approximately 20 agencies from enforcing Trump's directive until the conclusion of the unions' legal case.
Removing collective bargaining might enable government offices to modify work environments and make it simpler to dismiss or sanction employees, as well as stop labor unions from contesting policies of the Trump administration in judicial settings.
In April, a judge based in Washington, D.C., halted the enforcement of Trump's directive across seven government bodies such as the Departments of Justice, Treasury, and Health and Human Services. On May 16th, an appellate court suspended this decision temporarily as they review the Trump administration’s challenge.
Donato's decision affects those agencies as well as the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, State, and Labor, amongst others.
The White House has not yet responded to requests seeking comments.
Trump's executive order exempted agencies that he said "have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work," from collective bargaining obligations, significantly expanding an existing exception for workers with duties implicating national security, such as certain employees of the CIA and FBI.
This directive encompasses entities such as the Departments of Justice, State, Defense, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services, along with several additional agencies. According to documents filed in the unions' legal challenge, this impacts roughly 75 percent of federal employees who are presently unionized.
The legal challenges against the executive order claim that it aimed to penalize federal employee unions that had previously filed suits regarding President Trump’s initiatives to transform governmental operations, such as widespread dismissals and reductions in staff. Additionally, these unions assert that most of the workforce affected by this directive does not engage in national security or intelligence tasks.
The Trump administration launched two legal cases against AFGE and another labor organization with the aim of nullifying current negotiation pacts following his directive soon after it was issued.
On May 20, a judge in Kentucky ruled that the Treasury Department did not have legal grounds to file a suit concerning a union agreement for numerous IRS workers and subsequently threw out their lawsuit. Meanwhile, another case initiated by eight government departments against AFGE remains unresolved and is currently before a federal court in Texas.
(Reported by Daniel Weissner in Albany, New York, and Nate Raymond in Boston; Edited by Alexia Garamfalvi and Nia Williams)