AFSCME is standing together with federal government workers to fight back against attacks by the Trump administration.
On May 25, President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders to make it easier to fire federal workers and weaken their unions. It was not just an attack on labor unions but on democracy itself.
Now the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of one of Trump’s executive orders. AFSCME joined that lawsuit on Friday.
The lawsuit says Trump’s executive order to limit the amount of time that federal workers can spend fulfilling union roles violates the First Amendment-guaranteed freedom of association and rewrites portions of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act without the assent of Congress.
AFSCME President Lee Saunders said the 1.6 million members of AFSCME are standing together with their AFGE sisters and brothers to fight back against the Trump administration’s unconstitutional attacks.
“By instructing a federal agency to bargain in bad faith with its own workers, Trump has not only disrespected the people who take pride in keeping our country safe and healthy, he has also instructed his government to break the law and violated his own constitutionally mandated duty of care,” Saunders said. “Public service workers in our federal government are dedicated to improving America’s communities and they faithfully execute the laws of our country every day. We demand that the president of the United States be held to the same standard.”
AFGE said in a statement, “This is a democracy, not a dictatorship. No president should be able to undo a law he doesn’t like through administrative fiat. … Congress passed these laws to guarantee workers a collective voice in resolving workplace issues and improving the services they deliver to the public every day.”