President Donald Trump has delivered another decisive strike against the federal government’s bloated and entrenched bureaucracy by signing an executive order that ends collective bargaining rights for federal administrative workers.
This latest action by Trump is aimed squarely at what many conservatives have long criticized as an entitlement culture within the federal workforce, one that views taxpayer dollars as a never-ending source for employee benefits. The order specifically targets administrative employees in key departments, including Defense, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, State and Treasury.
The White House justified the order by pointing to national security provisions in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Under this law, the president has authority to eliminate collective bargaining for federal employees at agencies that have a direct impact on U.S. security.
Federal public-sector unions were quick to push back. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), representing a large number of affected workers, announced it is preparing immediate legal challenges to fight Trump’s executive order. AFGE President Everett Kelley condemned the order as retaliation against the union’s opposition to the president’s previous workforce reforms.
Trump’s administration anticipated legal challenges and took swift preemptive action by filing a lawsuit in Texas to uphold the termination of existing collective bargaining agreements. Attorney General Pam Bondi argued these union agreements severely limit the executive branch’s authority to manage important national security functions.
Trump’s latest move fits into a broader conservative argument that federal unions themselves are fundamentally anti-American, representing little more than organized government employees extracting resources from working Americans in the private sector.
The executive order is part of a larger Trump administration campaign to dramatically reduce federal spending. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk was recently appointed by Trump to lead the Department of Government Efficiency and tasked with cutting billions of dollars from government expenses each day.
In line with Trump’s broader strategy, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also recently announced major layoffs, removing approximately 10,000 federal employees from the payroll. If government workers find their employment conditions unacceptable, critics suggest they should seek employment in the private sector, just as millions of other Americans have done.
