EPA terminates federal union contracts, effective immediately
EPA’s announcement makes it the second known agency to officially cancel its union contracts, coming just after the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with comments from EPA.
The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it will no longer recognize its federal unions and that all collective bargaining agreements are terminated, effective immediately.
EPA’s announcement makes it the second known agency this week to cancel collective bargaining for agency employees, following a similar announcement at the Department of Veterans Affairs two days ago.
The impacted unions are the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Association of Government Employees, the Engineers and Scientists of California and the National Association of Independent Labor. Union leaders from those labor organizations received an email from EPA’s Office of Mission Support Friday afternoon.
“You are receiving this email because you are a union point of contact or have reported the use of official time in the recent past,” the email, obtained by Federal News Network, reads. “EPA’s contracts with AFGE, NAGE R4, NAGE Narraganset, ESC and NAIL are hereby terminated.”
In the email, EPA told the union leaders that they are expected to “perform 100% agency business while on agency duty time,” and that work on behalf of the union would only be allowed outside scheduled work hours. The agency said it would not be approving any official time past Aug. 9, and that it would be reclaiming any office space that union members were using.
“More details on the reacquisition of space will come from local management officials,” EPA wrote.
EPA also said effective immediately, grievance procedures under collective bargaining agreements are no longer in effect.
AFGE Local 238, which represents more than 8,000 EPA employees, blasted the agency’s decision to cancel the contracts, calling it unlawful.
“The Trump administration and EPA’s unlawful and authoritarian move to unilaterally strip EPA workers of their collective bargaining agreement and workplace rights is nothing short of an assault on our democracy, the rule of law, and the lives of working people in America,” AFGE Council 238 President Justin Chen said in a statement Friday evening. “AFGE Council 238 is united in our fight to defend our rights, our agency’s mission, and to protect the future of our country and planet. We will see the administration in court.”
“EPA is working to diligently implement President Trump’s executive orders with respect to AFGE, including ‘Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs,’ in compliance with the law,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement to Federal News Network.
The VA on Wednesday similarly said it was terminating the vast majority of its contracts with federal unions, effectively ending collective bargaining for more than 370,000 federal employees. Roughly 4,000 VA employees in police, firefighter and security positions are the only agency personnel who will maintain collective bargaining rights.
The union contract terminations come after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last week granted the Trump administration’s request to stay a lower court’s preliminary injunction. In effect, the appeals court decision allowed agencies to move forward with implementing President Donald Trump’s March executive order to cancel union contracts at a majority of federal agencies.
Trump’s anti-union executive order from March sought to eliminate collective bargaining at most federal agencies. The order made use of a narrow legal provision that allows the President to suspend collective bargaining for national security reasons.
Federal unions quickly sued the Trump administration over the anti-union executive order. They maintain that Trump’s order was a form of retaliation for the labor organizations’ First Amendment protected speech. That claim was based, in part, on a White House fact sheet that said Trump signed the order because unions were “hostile” toward his policies.
The appeals court, however, determined that based on the language of the executive order itself, the president likely would have terminated the union contracts anyway, even if the federal unions’ constitutionally protected speech wasn’t an issue.
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