Portside

Rendering collective bargaining inapplicable to the vast majority of federal workers, combined with the administration’s other attacks on the civil service, would leave the federal workforce in its weakest position in a century.

The mass firings were part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump, a Republican, and billionaire Elon Musk to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy and slash government spending, which has invited a series of legal challenges.

The American Federation of Government Employees has strongly opposed the bills.

As it becomes increasingly clear what a second Trump presidency means, America's labor movement has positioned itself as democracy's strongest, most important and best-organized line of defense against a sweeping authoritarian agenda.

The Trump administration is telling agencies to ignore any provisions in their collective bargaining agreements with federal unions that would impede reductions in force (RIFs), as agencies take steps toward implementing their initial RIF plans.

“They’re after nothing more than the entire public sphere,” Chris Dols of the Federal Unionists Network told the Foley Square crowd. He urged other public-sector unions to join the fight and “make it unmanageable."

Musk’s attacks on federal employees and their unions aren’t just a threat to the specific workers in his current line of fire. They pose an unparalleled danger to every single American.

Unions representing federal workers -- the American Federation of Government Employees; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; and the National Association of Government Employees -- sued to stop the resignation program.

The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employee filed suit against the Trump administration challenging efforts to politizise the civil service.

Even as Donald Trump seeks to disavow Project 2025, he and the rightwing effort’s authors have voiced similarly hostile plans for the US’s 2 million-plus federal employees – to replace many of them with political appointees.