Why government reform may hinge on ending federal unions

President Trump’s executive order ending collective bargaining for a wide swath of federal cabinet agencies and other government entities is a laudable attempt to end the failed experiment with federal government unions. It still faces some tests regarding whether the president’s reach goes that far.

Federal workers were first granted collective bargaining rights under Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of 1978, thanks to then-President Jimmy Carter. Section VII of the law, which deals with labor-management relations, states:

“The President may issue an order suspending any provision of this chapter with respect to any agency, installation, or activity order, located outside the 50 States and the District of Columbia, if the President determines that the suspension is necessary in the interest of national security.”

Trump’s executive order is based on this exception, asserting that the agencies listed in it are “vital to national security.” That makes sense in the case of cabinet agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, but Trump’s order also covered departments like Energy and the Interior. In those cases, the connection to national security, a term commonly understood to mean military defense, is much more tenuous. The Department of Veterans Affairs has an important task taking care of veterans, but to call it a matter of national security to eliminate collective bargaining rights for its staff is a stretch.

Still, it may work. “National defense,” like “interstate commerce,” is a phrase that has become quite elastic in politics in recent decades. The Biden administration declared that climate change was a national security issue in 2021. The Clinton administration declared AIDS to be a national security threat in 2000. Presidents like expanding the definition because it gives them more freedom to act absent legislation from Congress.

That said, the executive order also indicates that national security isn’t the real issue here. Part of the stated rationale for stripping workers of collective bargaining rights is because “[c]ertain Federal unions have declared war on President Trump’s agenda.”

The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) have all vowed to fight the order in court.

Note that the CRSA says the president may “suspend” collective bargaining, not end it. A future administration could simply write a new executive order bringing it back. So even if Trump wins in court, it may only be a temporary. To truly end federal unions would require Congress to repeal the CRSA.

Public sector unions are problematic because they have a major advantage over their private sector counterparts: their members are simultaneously government workers as well as constituents of the politicians that run the government. That gives them representation at both sides of the bargaining table.

When a manager sits down to negotiate a contract with a public sector union, he or she knows that if they push for too hard, they run the risk of angering a politician that wants the union’s support. Alternately, that manager may be the politician who wants the union’s support in the next election. Or at the very least doesn’t want it backing their rival.

Many saw it as inherently unbalanced and resisted the idea. Even union leaders were reluctant to back the idea. “The main function of American trade unions is collective bargaining. It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government,” wrote George Meany, the late president of the AFL-CIO, in 1955.

The inherent leverage is a major reason when public sector unions have grown while private sector ones have shrunk as a percentage of the workforce. Fully half of the union movement, about 7 million workers, work for the government at the local state or federal level, according to Labor Department data. The number of federal workers was 1.2 million in 1978, excluding military personnel. That number had grown to 1.4 million in 2010 and to 3 million by November 2024.

The Trump administration reasonably argues that this workforce is bloated and has sought to drastically downsize it. The unions have been at the forefront of fighting this. For all of the headlines regarding federal layoffs, the Labor Department reported this month that the federal workforce has only shrunk by 15,000 jobs since Trump took office. Democratic governments ought to exist to represent the interests of the taxpayers, not the workers in the bureaucracy.