Trump Escalates War on Federal Unions
The administration is stripping federal unions of collective bargaining rights, hurting workers and the American people.
Maximillian Alvarez
President Trump escalated his administration’s war on the federal workforce and workers’ rights when he signed an executive order to end collective bargaining with federal labor unions across the government. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 government employees, has sued the Trump administration over the executive order. In response to these intensifying assaults on federal workers, agencies, and critical programs like Social Security, unions, social justice and community organizations, veterans groups, and people of conscience will be participating in protest actions in locales across the US on Saturday, April 5. In this episode, we speak with James Jones, a maintenance mechanic with the National Park Service, a veteran, and a member of the Federal Unionists Network, to get a firsthand account of the Trump administration’s attacks on federal workers, agencies, and the people who depend on their services.
Maximillian Alvarez: Could we talk a bit more about your time working as a federal worker in the National Park Service. Could you tell us a bit more about yourself, how you got into doing that work, and what that work entailed?
James Jones: Over the years, there’s just been a steady decline of money. The budget basically has remained static over that timeframe. When you lose people to retirement, you’re really not able to cover that position sometimes because you’ve got to cover the cost of living raises, the cost of insurance, and all these other things. So over that span of time, we’ve actually lost employees in great numbers. And back in 2013 when they passed that sequestration bill, the Park Service I think in general lost about 30% of the workforce, and we’ve really never retained that number of employees back since that time. And so now we’re faced again with a possible 30% cut under DOGE’S proposal to cut the Park Service. We’re already lean. I always joke and say, “We’re not down to the bone anymore, we’re down to the marrow.”
We can’t really operate anymore unless we get more money and people and equipment and things to do our job. So it’s been a struggle, especially for the last 12 years. I think the maintenance backlog now is something like $16 billion for the whole Park Service. They just don’t have any money to maintain a lot of the facilities and trails and roads and such. It’s another gut punch to an agency that’s already suffering from a lot.
Maximillian Alvarez: What would you say to folks out there who are still convincing themselves that the number of government workers is unnecessary. Or beyond that, people who are pretending that flesh and blood working people like yourself are somehow like part of this evil deep state bureaucracy?
James Jones: We’re working people. We live in the same communities as these people do. Our kids go to the same schools, they go to the same churches. We go to the same grocery store, whatever. We’re all part of the community.
This notion that government workers are lazy, that one always floors me, because I know plenty of people in government service that work hard, and they’re dedicated to their missions. I sometimes think the public may not understand the depth of some of the work government workers do, because a lot of it is different than the private sector. Government doesn’t operate to make profit. We’re here to serve people. This notion that we should run government like a business, I don’t buy that. We’re not a business. We provide services.
Maximillian Alvarez: It feels like this has been a slow building crisis that’s now just reached a critical point, but the roots of that run deep.
James Jones: A lot of politicians hate labor unions. And it’s pretty obvious why, because unions have always been the tip of the spear to fight corruption, greed, these businesses that prey and exploit on people’s vulnerabilities.
It’s been going on for well over a century. Labor unions have had to fight and scratch for everything for their members. As Frederick Douglass said back in the 1850s, power concedes nothing without demand. And it’s true. They’re not going to give up anything. The billionaire class, they’re not going to give up anything. They’re just going to keep taking. And it is just sheer greed. It seems to me like a disease.
A lot of private companies don’t always do what they should be doing. They try every which way in the world to circumvent the law, because it costs ’em money if they have to abide by all these policies that the government imposes on ’em. But a lot of these policies are for good reason. They protect people’s health and safety.
Maximillian Alvarez: Could you just say a little more for folks out there about what the role of a union is for a federal workforce?
James Jones: So federal unions, they’re like private sector unions, trade unions. They’re there to protect the workers. They’re there to promote better working conditions and that sort of thing. We’re no different in that regard. The unions, they’re there to bargain collectively with their respective agencies for better working conditions. And that can be everything from a grievance procedure to disciplinary adverse actions over time; your lunch break, when you’re going to take that; your 15 minute breaks. Some people don’t realize this — the federal government does not have to give you two breaks during your workday. We have that in our contract.
So generally speaking, most [federal] unions are looking to promote good ties with management, improve the working conditions. We just can’t do certain things, like strike or negotiate pay. A lot of private sector unions can strike their employer if they don’t like what’s happening, their membership votes to strike, they go out on strike. We can’t do that. So we don’t have a lot of power as related to some of those private sector unions. But we still have power as far as establishing certain things, certain rights in the workplace. And the billionaire class can’t stand that. They pretty much destroyed the private sector unions.
Maximillian Alvarez: What’s your message to folks out there about why they should care about this?
James Jones: It’s not just an attack on federal workers. When the administration attacks federal workers, they are basically attacking the American people, because federal workers serve the American people. We’ve heard this over and over and over again, but it has to be said again: if you don’t have federal workers, you’re not going to have clean air and water. You’re not going to have safe food. You might not get your social security check. You might get it delayed. All this is up in the air.
This episode of the Working People Podcast was published on April 4.
Maximillian Alvarez is editor-in-chief at the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People, available at InTheseTimes.com. He is also the author of The Work of Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and the Year the World Broke.
