Federal workers achieved an important victory over the weekend, when a federal judge struck down key provisions of a series of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump to attack federal workers.
Trump signed the executive orders earlier this year to make it easier to fire federal workers and weaken their unions. Many AFSCME members are federal workers, and our union joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration.
On Saturday, U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson took a stand for workers’ rights, striking down the major provisions of the executive orders. She wrote that many of these provisions “effectively reduce the scope of the right to bargain collectively as Congress has crafted it.”
AFSCME President Lee Saunders called the ruling “an important victory for federal workers – for their collective bargaining rights, for their ability to have a powerful voice on the job and provide important services to the American people. It turns back a ruthless attack by the Administration on the integrity of the career civil service – and therefore on democracy itself.”
He added that our union “was proud to be a plaintiff in this case and to successfully defend the rights of members who work at the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Justice, Department of Agriculture and other agencies. These patriotic sisters and brothers dedicate their careers to making our nation safe and strong. Today’s decision empowers them to continue doing their work in the public interest, free of cronyism and partisanship, faithful to facts and the rule of law.”