NTEU Files Complaint Against Trump, Carr and Other Agency Leaders Over Union Order
The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents FCC staff, has sued President Donald Trump, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and the leaders of numerous other federal agencies over Thursday’s executive order ending collective bargaining for many federal employees (see 2503280044). Under…
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that order, federal agencies will cease recognizing NTEU as representatives for their employees and will stop the payroll deductions federal workers have requested to pay their union dues, “cutting off more than half of NTEU’s revenue stream,” the group said in the complaint, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (docket 1:25-cv-00935). The order eliminates union rights “for two-thirds of the entire federal workforce” and “is in direct conflict” with laws passed by Congress to facilitate collective bargaining for federal workers, NTEU said in a news release Monday. The national security exemptions to the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act cited in the order have never before been used to deny entire Cabinet-level agencies collective bargaining rights, “only discrete offices within agencies that clearly perform primarily security or intelligence work,” NTEU said. “NTEU-represented employees at FCC do not primarily perform security, investigative, or intelligence work,” it said. “They review and act on license applications for radio, enforce FCC rules regarding construction and operation of communications systems, and respond to consumer inquiries.” The FCC didn’t comment. NTEU has represented FCC employees since 1978. Their current collective bargaining agreement took effect in March 2023 and wasn’t set to expire until March 2030.