Originally published at: Courts Let Trump Strip Collective Bargaining Rights From Huge Number of Federal Workers - TPM – Talking Points Memo
Just days after a federal appeals court cleared the way for President Donald Trump to yank dozens of agencies and government offices out of their contracts with federal labor unions, the administration commenced doing just that, terminating collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of federal workers. On Wednesday, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced…
1 Like
The never-ending story
Every morning - every single morning
21 Likes
Every day in every way, slidin’ down to oligarchy.
Sickening.
13 Likes
Interesting that the police union stays. From my experience, police unions are often corrupt. They are certainly the least pro-worker of all unions.
22 Likes
And they definitely don’t "have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.”
Unlike those spooks over in the EPA.
10 Likes
Police Unions are nothing but gangs.
10 Likes
federal workers have now lost important worker protections that prevent them from falling victim to arbitrary firing and job loss
Cool. We’ll be able to arbitrarily fire the stooges Trump has stuffed into agencies.
10 Likes
While it was 23 years in June since I left federal service after 15 years of federal service, I can personally tell you how important unions are for doing the job of protecting the taxpayer. Also, that the attack on unions is not new.
I will give 2 examples in two posts starting with my becoming a union steward.
In 1990, I was due for a ROUTINE salary grade increase. Noting that I was still in law school at the time and that an uncle of mine(father’s brother who like my father and myself was also a CPA and born on the same day as myself but 34 years earlier, we will call him Uncle G) had been a leader in movement to unionize federal workers. I will leave the story about how my Uncle G had become involved for 3rd post if I have time as it may even be a better story than how Government unions affected me in my time of federal service.
Anyway, based on being in law school and my Uncle G, I was asked to become a union steward. I accepted on condition that it not be announced until after I received my salary grade (GS) increase that was due in a month. Of course someone at the union office missed that condition and immediately sent out a memo naming me as a new union steward for my office.
Management responded by denying my GS level increase. So my first act as a union steward was to file a grievance on my own behalf to obtain my salary grade increase. While eventually management would relent, they managed to stall my GS increase for over 6 months and I did not receive backpay.
For the avoidance of doubt that this all had to do with my becoming a union steward, there is the conversation with the reginal manager when he informed me of the denial of my GS increase.
He started by telling me my workpapers did not support my findings. He based that on some very small contract audits I did that combined had values of less than $300,000 and a budget, again combined, of 48 hours and took minimal exceptions. That is he claimed he took a “random sample” of my work and therefore ignored the other 20 contract audits and other audits I did where each individual contract had a value of between $500,000 to $10,000,000 and had taken an average of 15% exception that were mostly sustained and literally saving the federal Government over $10,000,000 in total.
While I was not that young I was still a little naive and was thinking, “okay, this is how the game is played so I will just have to wait a short while and my increase will come through” when the manager gave away the game.
He asked me, “how is your Uncle G enjoying his retirement”. As I said earlier, my Uncle G was on of an early leader in unionizing Government workers and in fact served several terms as the Union president of the very union that I was now a steward. The entire conversation went like this:
Manger, “how is G enjoying his retirement”.
Me, “he has been working since assisting his older brothers doing paper routes since he was 5 so he having some adjustments to not working at 66.”
Manager, “he was one of the best people we had and should have gone farther but he got caught up with the union and that ruined his career.”
Noting that Uncle G did not see it that way, as I said the regional manager gave up the game so that my first act as a union steward was to file a grievance on behalf of myself to receive my GS increase.
However, it must be noted that as I did not receive backpay, what the delay in getting my GS increase did was delay my anniversary date which meant that for the remainder of my federal service I would receive increases 6 months later. I would stay with the Government, albeit in different capacities for more than 10 years. Combined with the delay in my initial GS increase, the delay pushback of my anniversary date when I would receive other increases cost me over the time of my federal service about $20,000 for becoming a union steward.
My next post will discuss how the union affected my ability to actual perform the job reviewing contracts for the Government.
18 Likes
Joe Sixpack doesn’t care who does’t get paid or treated fairly on the job as long as it isn’t a trans person or one a them brown people.
9 Likes
As far as the VA goes, just a reminder that veterans voted for Trump over Harris by a nearly 2:1 margin.
13 Likes
Incredibly, polls indicated that nearly 45% of union members nationwide voted for Trump in 2024.
I haven’t seen any conclusive studies, but the evidence strongly suggests that these may be among the dumbest humans that have ever existed.
10 Likes
You forget the all important IOKIYAR rule of legal construction. Mark my words, the courts will quickly change course if a Democratic administration were to try to rely on trump era legal precedent.
8 Likes
Conservatism!!! The right stole the word and gave it a new meaning not based on Lincoln, not based on the founding fathers.
We need to go back to Lincoln and the founding fathers and to the progress we made before Reagan came along. Voting rights! Civil rights! Freedom of the press, free speech, freedom to make health choices, freedom to assemble. Labor rights in the U.S., protected by federal and state laws, include protections against discrimination, the right to fair wages and working conditions, safe working condition, also protect free speech, which is relevant to labor organizing, though the application of these rights can be complex.
Tired of the lies and novel interpretation of the constitution by and for Republicans hell bent on taking our rights away,
8 Likes
Apparently contracts are sacrosanct unless they’re with the feds.
12 Likes
When I worked in Superior Court the Sheriff’s Dept. received
cost of living raises while the rest of staff went 6 1/2 years
without any cost of living raise. And we were all unionized.
11 Likes
the courts will quickly change course
I won’t mind. We’re going to ignore them too.
Right? ; - )
4 Likes
Or with any entity even remotely associated to tRump.
5 Likes
The chickens have come home to roost, big time.
5 Likes
These republicans are scumbags. Pure and simple evil shits.
5 Likes