Treasury Union Punches Back at Trump to Protect Labor Rights (1)

The nation’s second largest federal union launched a legal counterattack to President Donald Trump’s executive order rolling back collective bargaining in the federal sector.

The National Treasury Employees Union sued the Trump administration Monday, arguing that Trump exceeded his authority and violated the law with his order claiming many agencies are excluded from labor law obligations because of national security concerns.

“The law plainly gives federal employees the right to bargain collectively and the shocking executive order abolishing that right for most of them, under the guise of national security, is an attempt to silence the voices of our nation’s public servants,” NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said in a statement.

The union’s lawsuit marks an escalation in the brewing battle pitting the federal government against its workers’ representatives.

The Trump administration filed lawsuits against NTEU and American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union, seeking to void collective bargaining agreements. The administration’s lawsuits came shortly after Trump signed his executive order calling on agencies across the executive branch to halt collective bargaining with federal unions.

The backdrop for the administration’s fight with federal sector unions is its effort to radically cut the size of the federal workforce by laying off tens of thousands of employees and attempting to unilaterally shutter entire agencies.

Trump cited the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 to justify exempting a slew of agencies from collective bargaining obligations, saying they have a role in protecting national security.

The scope of of the order is vast. It affects workers at about 20 departments and agencies, including those at the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Interior, Justice, State, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs.

The unprecedented use of the national security exemption would exclude from collective bargaining roughly two-thirds of the federal workforce and three-fourths of the workers with union representation, NTEU said in its lawsuit.

None of the agencies meet the requirements of the exemption, which allows exclusion from the collective bargaining statute only if an agency “has a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work” and if the statute cannot be applied “in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations,” the union said, quoting from the exemption.

Trump’s own fact sheet on his EO shows that the exclusions weren’t actually based on the exemption’s criteria, NTEU said.

“They were instead based on a policy goal of making federal employees easier to fire and political animus against federal sector unions who have opposed the Trump Administration’s initiatives,” the union said.

A White House spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case is NTEU v. Trump, D.D.C., No. 25-00935, complaint filed 3/31/25.