By CASEY HARPER | THE CENTER SQUARE
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to drastically cut government and clean out inefficiencies, but he faces an entrenched power in Washington, D.C. that may throw a wrench in his plans: federal government public employee unions.
“For president-elect Trump to succeed at making the federal bureaucracy more efficient and accountable to the American people, he’ll have to once again do battle with federal unions,” Max Nelsen, a labor policy expert at the Freedom Foundation, told The Center Square.
Trump has tapped top businessmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency effort. Musk has claimed he can cut $2 trillion in federal spending.
n a November joint editorial in the Wall Street Journal, Musk and Ramaswamy pledged “mass head-count reductions” in the federal government.
Firing federal workers is notoriously rare and difficult, but Ramaswamy has publicly said that mass, indiscriminate firings may allow for circumventing the usual bureaucratic holdups for firing a federal employee.
Trump himself recently pledged to cut “hundreds of billions” in federal spending.
“Government unions are hands down the single most significant defenders of the administrative state,” Nelsen said. “Their interests are always served by bigger, more expensive, less accountable government, and their partisan allegiance to the radical Left leads them to both overtly and covertly undermine conservative policy changes across the federal government…”
The first battle with unions in the DOGE war may be federal work from home policies, where unions have already threatened legal action to protect their pre-arranged deals with the Biden administration.
Trump threatened to fire federal employees who are not willing to report to the office, a clear shot at federal work-from-home policies, something Musk has also blasted in recent weeks.
“If people don’t come back to work, come back into the office, they’re going to be dismissed,” Trump told reporters during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago. The largest federal employee union quickly shot back after Trump made the comments and threatened legal action.
Trump’s comments are likely at least in part reacting to a Biden administration official negotiating a deal with a union that extends until 2029, after Trump is scheduled to leave office.
As The Center Square previously reported, Social Security Administrator Martin O’Malley negotiated a deal with union leaders to codify work-from-home policies, keeping telework in place for his 42,000 employees until 2029.
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, pointed out that these contracts are legally binding.
“Collective bargaining agreements entered into by the federal government are binding and enforceable under the law,” Kelley said. “We trust the incoming administration will abide by their obligations to honor lawful union contracts. If they fail to do so, we will be prepared to enforce our rights.”
Trump’s backers may have an ace in the hole, though, in the form of new Supreme Court precedent.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year in a landmark case to overturn Chevron deference, the longstanding legal practice of giving federal agencies broad power to interpret and practically change and expand federal laws as they deemed fit, citing their expertise.
Now, Musk and Ramaswamy will likely have more leeway in cutting rules from the books and workers from the payroll.
Nelsen said Trump should limit the amount of federal dollars that go toward unions, and that he should increase union transparency.
“Additionally, President Trump will need a cadre of energetic appointees at the Office of Personnel Management, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and in labor relations departments government wide to aggressively implement his directives,” Nelsen said. “Finally, to truly have a long-term impact, President Trump will need a successor in four years committed to continuing the fight.”
Ramasawmy and Musk are fun guys but they don’t have an inkling in how to rod government of offices or waste. that is why need they need the press and small businesses like Must Read to showboat all that they will put in the press for starters Secondly. they had chance to take a start at the cutting waste and government offices and didn’t in the appropriations bill. So, it’s the old lesson in life, “live and learn.” Looks like it could take longer than 4 years.
1) President Trimp is not in office yet so DOGE is not official. 2) The spending bill that just passed went from close to 3000 pages to 118 pages so just the threat of DOGE had an effect without being official. 3) The fetid DC swamp and unelected bureaucrats who think they run the show regardless of who is president is miles deep.
There is a difference between a termination versus a lay-off. From what I recall, the intent is to lay-off federal employees, not fire them. Words have meaning…,.
This is the change that needs to happen! Too much federal spending all over the place, Federal overreach. Our government is out of control. They are supposed to be working FOR US…. Not against us like it has been. I know it’s a big job, but Musk and Rameswamy will nail the ones that need to go.
It’s important to remember the employer of federal employees is not really the federal government, it’s the American taxpayer. The unions never express it that way, but that is who they are positioning against. So if they sue they are suing you and I, not the Trump administration. We are the deep pockets, collectively.
Best point.
If you’re a federal employee, you work for we, the people. The people have made their wishes clearly known.
We are broke and borrowing money every minute of every day so if they want to work for free we need to cut loose 50% to start.
You want a cushion job go find one in the private sector.
Musk and Ramaswamy are not going to fix anything, just like trump isn’t going to stop the flood of invaders , in fact they will open up the nation to massive Indian immigration just like Australia and Canada are doing. They will likely roll out the North American Union new currency to bail us out, similar to how the Euro was rolled out with the EU. No one is going to stop the great replacement, or the usury scam central banks, it will continue as Kalergi said. Western (White) civilization is being deliberately replaced for cheap and compliant third world labor, conservatives conserve nothing and progressives don’t progress. Demographics are destiny, our destiny is third world status.
Oh c’mon, please be merciful and continue coddling the enfant terribles through 2029 -at least until the imminent threat of death, destruction, and economic collapse, hinging on the “transmissibility” of the bird flu, passes.
We cannot expect these exceptional individuals to crawl out of their parents’ basements and consider removing their masks until the dark cloud of “Trump’s America” passes over their safe spaces.
If you upset the cradle too soon, more angry women might descend upon Lake Michigan to emit their primal screams or -gasp!- join the 4B movement. Who could give countenance to such a frightening prospect?
Reagan did it with ATC’s, Trump can do it again.
One option to enact immediately is to change locations of all the federal agency offices in Washington.
Select locations in urban neighborhoods across the country that are now gang infested ghettos and find derelict buildings to lease. Limit repairs to the life style level of the neighborhood, why should the quality of life of federal union workers be subsidized well above that of average Americans?
Over time this will “gentrify” these neighborhoods, the federal employees who wish to move will then actually be giving back to the once proud and functional nation and society they have destroyed.
Also locations in rural areas that have taken the brunt of our deindustrializing and monopolizing Walmart type corporations, resulting in ghost towns and abandoned commercial buildings.
The best option is to eliminate most federal agencies entirely. There is no guarantee these positions must be kept.
The idea of eliminating federal employee unions is worth pursuing. The idea that government employees must be shielded from the government itself is ludicrous.
Excellent ideas!
What is “federal union pushback”?
.
We’re how many trillions of dollars in debt, but have to worry about “federal union pushback”?
.
Should be fun to watch what happens when “federal union pushbackers” back themselves into a corner and repeat the historic mistake of their air traffic control brethren, no?
Remember the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO)? Bye-bye. It can be done.
Indeed it can be done not only did Reagan flatten the Air traffic controllers but they were banned from ever being airtraffic controllers again. Lots of people lost their jobs and lo and behold they were replaced and in short order. The election in November we the people set a mandate. Reign in this out of control federal nightmare. It’s going to get done come hell or high water.
They were not just banned from being ATCs again. They were banned from all Federal employment until Reagan reversed that call form some of them several years later. I seem to remember Clinton removed that prohibition entirely. Or it could have been W. Not sure. Not interested enough to check.
In order to pay these stipends they have to be doing something expressive delegated within the letter of the foundational created out of a revolutionary war on this continent. The Constitution was written in plain English. “They” must have subject matter and personal jurisdiction over any activity written expressly in plain English in the guaranteed letter of the foundational constitutional law.
It is sometimes funny to me, this feeling inside…c’mon ya’ll you know this song- it’s not easy to hide.
This was the mistake in Alaska – a devastating miscalculation- people that traditionally run in the daily dose of dark – who sleep through the sunlight partner up with folks they do not understand.
They shortsightedly navigate to the people they feel are weak in the darkness – not knowing how much more dangerous people from the North are in the light of day.
Welcome to the arctic. Now I choose.
The government unions need to be careful pushing back too hard. They were allowed to organize via a JFK Executive Order. Trump can rescind the EO just as easily as JFK signed it. Cheers –
There is no more protected species in the world than the union employee and there is no more protected worker than the federal union employee. The uniform standard of civil service has gone the way of the dodo with individual agencies negotiating individual terms with the union. This is the unprecedented source of the embedded deep state and the culmination of a swollen government administrative state with no at will employment even for changing administrations; The paper-pusher being the constant. I’m afraid the only way to purge them is through a golden handshake of sorts, but that would not bode well with the principle behind DOGE. Hopefully Elon and Vivek can find a way.
Move the jobs to other states, like Wyoming and South Dakota. That will purge the employment rolls.