Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that marks his most decisive attack on the civil-service system so far. The order, “Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs,” ended collective bargaining for unions across most of the federal government.
These unions have been a millstone around the neck of the government and taxpayers for decades. Trump is right to end their influence.
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Despite the enduring image of hard-hat-wearing factory workers, today’s unionized employees are more likely to be white-collar workers in government jobs. In the private sector, only 6 percent of the workforce is unionized. In the federal government, that figure rises to 25 percent—over a third if the military is excluded. President Joe Biden’s expansion of federal hiring, combined with his strong support for unionization, helped federal unions surpass 1 million members by the end of his term.
But federal employees aren’t in desperate need of union protection. The average annual pay in the federal workforce is $100,000, and it rises to $140,000 if one includes the generous benefits. That’s more than 50 percent higher than average private-sector compensation. The vast majority of federal employees are white-collar workers with bachelor’s degrees. They are hardly an oppressed group.
In his executive order, the president invoked a section of civil service law that allows him to stop collective bargaining if he determines that an agency “has as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.” Most of the largest departments named in the order fit that description, including the Department of Defense, much of the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy, which focuses heavily on defense and nuclear issues. The legal basis for Trump’s action in these cases is solid.
But some agencies on Trump’s list are more of a legal stretch, among them the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration. The White House claims that functions like fossil-fuel production, pandemic preparedness, or economic activity are related to national security, and thus can be removed from the unions’ grip. Courts will try to roll back his order for these agencies, unless Congress steps in to support his agenda.
The Trump administration’s guidance on the order targeted in particular the egregious practice of “official time,” or “union time”—federal employees working on union business while being paid by taxpayers and using government office space.
For example, union representatives spend hundreds of thousands of hours every year negotiating collective bargaining agreements, meaning the government pays to negotiate against itself. Unions use many more official-time hours fighting penalties or dismissals of workers, meaning the government funds opposition to its own managers. Altogether, the government estimates that official time costs taxpayers over $150 million annually.
Federal unions are making a ruckus about the executive order, but they often don’t speak for their members. Everett Kelley, who leads the largest federal employee union, estimates that about 30 percent of his members voted for Trump. Yet somehow, 94 percent of the American Federation of Government Employees’ donations in the last election went to Democrats.
The AFGE also sued Trump to end his deferred resignation program, which offered cash for employees who wanted to leave the civil service. It’s hard to see the harm to the union’s members if they want to accept voluntary retirement. The clear reason AFGE opposed the offer is that it wanted to keep as many dues-payers as possible.
President Trump may be pushing boundaries, but his challenge to government unions rests on firm legal footing and plain common sense. There is no justification for handing control of the federal workforce to unions that obstruct its mission. Whatever portions of the president’s order survive will mark a lasting improvement in the civil service.
Photo by ALEX WROBLEWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
