West Central Florida Federation of Labor
For the latest from the Central Labor Council go to the legislative page listed under Committee’s
Trump Takes Aim at Union Federal Workers on First Day in Office
On Inauguration Day among the many Executive Orders that President Trump issued, four will directly impact the federal governments’ union workforce, largely represented by the American Federation of Governmental Employees: Telework, Schedule F, a hiring freeze, and the closure of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs within federal agencies.
The first restricts federal employee telework. From a statement from AFGE President Everett Kelley:
“This directive turns back the clock to before 2010 when Congress required federal agencies to expand telework by law. Congress took this action a full decade before the pandemic, recognizing telework as an important tool for agencies’ operational efficiency.
“To justify this backward action, lawmakers and members of President Trump’s transition team have spent months exaggerating the number of federal employees who telework and accusing those who do of failing to perform the duties of their jobs. The truth is that less than half of all federal jobs are eligible for telework, and the workers who are eligible to telework still spend most of their work hours at their regular duty stations.
“Providing eligible employees with the opportunity to work hybrid schedules is a key tool for recruiting and retaining workers in both the public and private sectors. Restricting the use of hybrid work arrangements will make it harder for federal agencies to compete for top talent. It’s also been a critical tool for federal agencies to maintain continuity of operations in emergencies, increase disaster preparedness, and improve efficiency. Hybrid work has been so successful that many agencies have been working to consolidate unused office space and sell off properties that are costly to maintain — meaning there may no longer be enough office space to accommodate an influx of on-site workers.
“Rather than undoing decades of progress in workplace policies that have benefited both employees and their employers, I encourage the Trump administration to rethink its approach and focus on what it can do to make government programs work better for the American people.”
The second order is Trump’s controversial reinstatement of Schedule F which states that any career federal job connected to federal policy will serve at the pleasure of the President, denying their due process rights and allowing them to be easily fired and replaced with Trump loyalists. Here’s President Everett’s statement on the matter:
“President Trump’s order is a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees’ due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons. It will remove hundreds of thousands of federal jobs from the nonpartisan, professional civil service and make them answerable to the will of one man.
“This unprecedented assertion of executive power will create an army of sycophants beholden only to Donald Trump, not the Constitution or the American people. The integrity of the entire federal government could be irreparably harmed if this is not stopped.
“America’s civil service is a merit system protected from corruption by due process rights for federal employees. Corrupting the civil service by reclassifying professional jobs into Schedule F is against the interests of American citizens who expect that federal employees be hired solely based on their ability to carry out the duties of their position. In a recent Wall Street Journal poll, more than 60% of voters said they are opposed to Trump firing career civil-service workers and replacing them with hand-picked appointees.
“AFGE urges Congress to intervene immediately to stop Schedule F. Every American has a stake in ensuring that federal employees remain free to carry out the mission of the agencies that employ them without fear of political interference.”
Finally, see this additional statement from AFGE for information on the hiring freeze and closure of DEI programs.