Executive Order on "Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs"

Update: On December 12, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) terminated the union contract for Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers. If allowed to stand, this would take union rights away from 47,000 TSA employees working at airports across the country. This is despite an injunction blocking this action since June. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s determination came barely a day after Congress passed bipartisan legislation to overturn Trump’s original executive order, and to restore collective bargaining rights for federal workers.

Timeline

December 11, 2025 – The U.S. House of Representatives passed bipartisan legislation, the Protecting America’s Workforce Act, to overturn this Executive Order and to restore and reaffirm collective bargaining rights for federal employees. This also marks the first and only time that the U.S. House of Representatives has voted to overturn a Trump Executive Order since he took office in January 2025.

September 25, 2025 – The Federal Bureau of Prisons announced it was terminating its collective bargaining agreement with the Council of Prison Locals (CPL-33), citing the union becoming “an obstacle to progress instead of a partner in it.” The termination of the contract would impact more than 30,000 prison workers. CPL-33 is an affiliate of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which has sued the Trump administration for several executive orders that impact the federal workforce.

August 28, 2025 – President Trump issued an Executive Order extending his original March EO to include more agencies. This EO would also exclude workers at agencies including NASA, NOAA, the National Weather Service, and more from their rights to join a union and lines up the potential elimination of even more collective bargaining agreements.

https://www.epi.org/policywatch/executive-order-on-exclusions-from-federal-labor-management-relations-programs/