The Trump administration has collided with a legal roadblock in its quest to limit the collective bargaining rights of almost 160,000 federal government employees belonging to the National Treasury Employees Union, or NTEU.
These rights are the process by which working people, through their unions, negotiate contracts with their employers to determine their terms of employment.
On April 25, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled that President Donald Trump’s March 27 order can’t be enforced in full at approximately three dozen agencies and departments where employees are represented by the NTEU, including those whose missions are concerned with national and border security; foreign relations; energy and cybersecurity; economic defense; and public and pandemic safety.
Friedman will issue an opinion in several days, and has allowed attorneys until May 2 to submit their own proposals.
The Catholic Labor Network, or CLN — which unites clergy, religious, laity and others to advance the principles of Catholic social teaching on the dignity of work and the rights of workers — had earlier dispatched an April 20 letter to Trump, stating, “We respectfully and prayerfully urge you to rescind this order.”
Citing the encyclicals of both Pope Leo XIII and St. John Paul II — both of whom were concerned with labor and workers’ rights — the CLN noted “the Catholic Church has consistently affirmed the moral and human right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. This teaching is not limited to private-sector employment,” the letter observed. “The Church has long held that the dignity of workers is not dependent on whether their employer is public or private; rather, it is a reflection of their inherent human dignity.”
St. John Paul said, “(Unions) are indeed a mouthpiece for the struggle for social justice, for the just rights of working people in accordance with their individual professions” (“Laborem Exercens,” 1981), while Pope Leo encouraged “societies for mutual help” of which “(t)he most important of all are workingmen’s unions” (“Rerum Novarum,” 1891) .
CLN’s letter then issued a perhaps uncomfortable reminder.
“Your administration has voiced a commitment to defending the dignity of work and uplifting working families,” it said. “This Executive Order, however, directly undermines that commitment and contradicts long-standing Catholic teaching on the rights of workers.”
Joseph McCartin, a professor of history at Georgetown University and executive director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, said the Trump administration’s action is unprecedented.
“The Trump administration’s effort to undermine the collective bargaining rights that federal workers have held for the past 63 years is a shocking affront to Catholic moral teaching on the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively,” said McCartin. “If the CLN was to remain true to its mission of defending Catholic teaching on workers’ rights, then it was honor-bound to call attention to this fact.”
As NTEU notes on its website, “Congress declared 47 years ago that collective bargaining in the federal sector was in the public’s interest by giving employees a voice in the workplace and allowing labor and management to work together to help the federal government provide the services that Americans depend upon every day.”
The union admitted a narrow exemption for groups of employees whose work directly impacts national security, but asserted that “Trump’s overreaching order is blatant retaliation against federal sector unions and ignores the laws passed by Congress that created the agencies and assigned them vital public service missions.”
NTEU national president Doreen Greenwald declared a victory following Friedman’s April 25 ruling.
“Today’s court order is a victory for federal employees, their union rights and the American people they serve,” said Greenwald. “The preliminary injunction granted at NTEU’s request means the collective bargaining rights of federal employees will remain intact and the administration’s illegal agenda to sideline the voices of federal employees and dismantle unions is blocked.”
Greenwald vowed to persist against Trump’s order.
“NTEU will continue to use every tool available,” she declared, “to protect federal employees and the valuable services they provide from these hostile attacks on their jobs, their agencies and their legally protected rights to organize.”
The White House released a fact sheet defending its position, maintaining, “The President needs a responsive and accountable civil service to protect our national security.” It further specified the order is meant to impede federal unions who have “declared war on President Trump’s agenda.”
Earlier in April — when filing a preliminary injunction in Friedman’s court — Greenwald declared, “We all know this has nothing to do with national security and that the true goal here is to make it easier to fire federal employees across government.”
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