One of the latest actions by President Donald Trump isn’t getting the big headlines, but it should.
On Thursday night, the president signed the “Exclusions From Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs” Executive Order (EO), which bars unions representing vast swaths of the federal workforce from engaging in collective bargaining. The EO focuses on agencies in the national security sphere, but has the net effect of neutralizing the power of the unions.
Collective bargaining is the process where employees band together via union organization to negotiate with their employers—in this case, the federal government. Most public sector unions bargain over things like wages, benefits, and all sorts of perks and privileges the average, non-unionized American worker doesn’t get. Federal employee unions are only allowed to negotiate over working conditions. Removing it neuters the unions and puts the federal employees affected by the EO on notice that they serve the American people, not the unions.
The action by President Trump will affect several departments, including State, Defense, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, Justice, and several divisions within Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Interior, Energy, Agriculture and Commerce. In other words, it’s a monumental strike against the unions.
And all the right people are mad.
Here’s Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) to remind you he’s no conservative.
Notice how he goes right to the threat of legal action against the Trump administration? He’s quite obviously comfortable in the knowledge that activist judges will trip over themselves to stop this EO from taking effect. No effort required.