Government workers are 'canary in coalmine' for Trump bid to gut union rights, leaders warn

Source: The Guardian

Fri 22 Aug 2025 06.00 EDT
Last modified on Fri 22 Aug 2025 06.01 EDT


The Trump administration has unilaterally stripped hundreds of thousands of federal workers of their union contracts after a federal appeals court overruled an injunction which halted the plans. It is just getting started, according to the White House.

An executive order issued in March sought to cancel all collective bargaining agreements for most federal employees, citing national security concerns – and remove collective bargaining rights from more than a million workers.

While unions including the American Federation of Government Employees launched legal action as they challenged the move, obtaining an injunction, this was in effect overruled earlier this month. Union contracts at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture have since been terminated. An estimated 400,000 have been affected, about 2.6% of unionized workers in the US.

“I think that what this administration is doing is trying us as a test bed. If they are successful, I do believe that they’ll be coming after every labor organization in the US,” Everett Kelley, president of the AFGE, the largest federal labor union in the US, told the Guardian. “This is a fight for the very democracy of this country. This is a fight for every worker in America.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/22/trump-federal-workers-union-rights