Federal Worker Unions Short on Options During Trump Policy Blitz

Federal workers and their unions hold a shrinking arsenal of methods to fight the Trump administration’s moves to cut the public workforce after appeals courts rebuffed efforts to halt the government’s actions and federal labor panels were left deadlocked and overwhelmed with thousands of new cases.

The US Supreme Court and multiple appellate courts knocked down injunctions against President Donald Trump’s mandates to restructure the government and strip collective bargaining rights from workers. That has allowed the administration to carry out the president’s vision of drastically shrinking the federal workforce to reduce administrative bloat and inefficiency.

Public sector unions and workers’ rights attorneys prepared to oppose Trump’s overhaul of the federal government, but have been overwhelmed by the breadth of his actions, said Suzanne Summerlin, a worker-side attorney and general counsel for the Federal Workers Legal Defense Fund. Trump has signed executive orders to ignore collective bargaining rights for over a million workers, fire probationary employees and those in roles devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion, re-categorize political appointees to give them fewer civil service protections, and effectively shutter entire agencies.

“The thing we didn’t count on was them doing all of it,” Summerlin said.

Compounding the issue, the federal agencies tasked with hearing and deciding labor disputes within the government are also either facing severe restructuring or critical leadership gaps that observers and lawyers say leave them ill-equipped to handle the rise in claims coming their way.

These setbacks mean Trump has been largely free to remake the federal workforce.

Multi-Front Battle

Federal-sector labor unions have challenged the barrage of initiatives in multiple venues.

The American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union, together some of the largest unions for federal workers, initially obtained federal court injunctions to block layoffs and the termination of collective bargaining rights, but the Supreme Court and several appellate courts stayed the orders.

Other agency disputes are being handled in a more traditional manner. The AFGE local representing workers at the Environmental Protection Agency is examining litigation options after 139 workers were put on unpaid administrative leave for signing a letter critical of Trump and the agency’s new leaders. They’ve also pursued arbitration around return-to-office mandates and other actions that union leadership says violated their collective bargaining agreement.

The union representing workers at the US Patent and Trademark Office has also grieved RTO policy changes as well as the suspension of worker training programs.

Those arbitration proceedings can eventually be appealed up to the Federal Labor Relations Authority—tasked with adjudicating unfair labor practices and facilitating union elections—but it’s been deadlocked since February after Trump fired former chair Susan Grundmann. With one Democrat and one Republican on the panel, it’s likely the FLRA won’t decide controversial cases until another member is appointed.

“We don’t have any other option,” said Justin Chen, president of AFGE Council 238. “We have to exhaust every single regular venue as proposed through the Federal Labor Relations Act before we can even think about trying to sniff civil court.”

Some agencies are refusing to engage in arbitration. Thomas Dargon Jr., deputy general counsel of AFGE’s National Veteran’s Affairs Council, said in an email that the VA is attempting to put grievance and arbitration proceedings in abeyance pending the outcome of the federal court litigation over Trump’s bargaining executive order.

“Our position is that our collective bargaining agreements remain in full force and effect, and VA is required by law and CBA to participate in grievance and arbitration proceedings,” Dargon said.

Watchdog Agencies Overwhelmed

The Merit Systems Protection Board, which hears appeals from workers over adverse employment decisions, has been inundated with thousands of new cases and lacks a quorum to make final decisions on them.

The MSPB has received over 11,000 new cases since Trump took office, more than double what it received in the entirety of fiscal year 2024, according to the agency’s records.

Workers’ attorneys say administrative judges are still hearing cases and issuing preliminary decisions but wait times for final decisions are ballooning due to staffing cuts and the lack of a quorum after Trump fired Democratic Member Cathy Harris and the other Democratic member retired.

“Once an administrative judge issues a recommended decision and there’s an appeal for that decision, if there’s no quorum, it’ll just sit there,” said Keir Bickerstaffe, an attorney with Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch, P.C. Some MSPB cases sat untouched for five years after the first Trump administration left the board with no quorum, Bickerstaffe said.

The FLRA has been without a Senate-confirmed general counsel since 2017, which cuts off another pathway for unions to get disputes before the full authority and compounds the issue if agencies refuse to engage in arbitration.

The FLRA’s Grundmann and MSPB’s Harris both sued to undo their firings. The Supreme Court and a D.C. federal appeals panel upheld injunction stays in Harris and Grundmann’s cases, respectively, meaning they likely won’t be reinstated until the merits of their firings are examined.

The White House proposed drastically shrinking the FLRA and consolidating decision-making responsibilities with the authority members starting next year.

The fiscal year 2026 budget proposed eliminating all administrative law judges and designating the authority’s staff attorneys as hearing officers to conduct fact-finding and draft recommended decisions in ULP cases. It will also remove decision-making responsibility from regional directors in representation cases, allowing those disputes to go straight up to the authority.

The budget proposal states the changes are designed to improve agency efficiency and cut costs, but Summerlin said it could inflict lasting damage.

“The changes being made to the FLRA are really permanent disruptions to the way things have been done in the past that keep confidence in the FLRA as a neutral adjudicatory body,” she said.