US judge tosses Trump administration bid to cancel union contracts

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) -A federal judge has dismissed a bid by President Donald Trump’s administration to obtain judicial permission to cancel dozens of collective bargaining agreements between eight federal agencies and unions representing their employees. 

Waco, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Alan Albright decided late on Wednesday that the agencies do not have legal standing to bring a lawsuit to implement a Trump executive order exempting them from having to bargain with unions, handing a victory to the American Federation of Government Employees union, or AFGE.

Albright’s ruling deals at least a temporary setback to the Republican president’s broader efforts to lift restrictions on firing federal employees and shrink the federal bureaucracy.

White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said Trump was using his lawful executive powers to eliminate union contracts that pose national security risks.

“The Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue,” Rogers said in a statement.

AFGE President Everett Kelley in a statement said: “We are very pleased that the courts have once again ultimately sided with public servants and AFGE and stopped another attack by this administration on the patriotic, dedicated Americans who serve their country in the federal government.”

The Departments of Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Social Security Administration, filed the lawsuit in March. The American Federation of Government Employees represents 800,000 federal workers.

The agencies had claimed in the lawsuit that the administration of Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden entered into collective bargaining agreements with AFGE in the months before Trump took office to block him from firing federal workers en masse and pursuing other policies.

Eliminating collective bargaining would make it easier for agencies to alter working conditions and fire or discipline workers. It also could prevent federal worker unions from challenging Trump administration initiatives in court.

But Albright on Wednesday said courts do not have the power to approve the government’s “desired future course of conduct” before it acts.

“Plaintiffs’ suit, however well-intentioned, is an unprecedented invitation for an advisory opinion — one that could open a Pandora’s Box of encouraging the Executive Branch to seek the Judiciary’s blessing for every Executive Order prior to implementation,” the judge said.

Albright, who Trump appointed during his first term as president, did not address the merits of the administration’s claim that agencies can nullify existing union contracts. 

Trump in the executive order excluded agencies from collective bargaining obligations that he said “have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative or national security work.” The order applies to the Justice, State, Defense, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services departments, among other agencies.

Trump’s order affects about 75% of the roughly 1 million federal workers represented by unions, according to court filings. It significantly expanded an existing exception from collective bargaining for workers with duties affecting national security, such as certain employees of the CIA and FBI.

Federal judges in California and Washington, D.C., have blocked agencies from implementing Trump’s order in lawsuits by the AFGE and another union. A U.S. appeals court in May paused the Washington judge’s ruling, and a different court is considering doing the same in the California case. 

Separately in May, a federal judge in Kentucky ruled that the U.S. Department of the Treasury lacked standing to seek to void a union contract covering tens of thousands of Internal Revenue Service employees. 

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Will Dunham, Nick Zieminski and David Gregorio)