Portside Date: January 6, 2026

Author: Daniel Wiessner

Date of source: December 31, 2025

Reuters

A second U.S. judge has blocked President Donald Trump's administration from effectively shutting down a federal agency that acts as a mediator for workplace strikes and other labor disputes.

 

U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian in Manhattan late on Tuesday agreed with 17 labor unions that the administration had failed to explain why it had moved to limit the reach of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service and that doing so violated federal law.

 

Trump in a March executive order, opens new tab directed that the mediation service and six other agencies be reduced "to the minimum presence and function required by law."

 

The mediation service subsequently said that it would only assign mediators in disputes in the healthcare industry that involve units of at least 250 employees, and in other sectors when at least 1,000 employees were involved.

 

More than 90% of the agency's employees have been placed on administrative leave and the agency has closed all of its field offices, leaving a skeleton staff in Washington, according to court filings.

Subramanian on Tuesday said those actions conflicted with a federal law directing the agency to "use its best efforts" to forge agreements between unions and employers.

 

"It would make little sense for Congress to mandate FMCS to communicate with parties, only to completely drop any involvement in a case on a whim because it decided that its 'best efforts' involved doing nothing," wrote Subramanian, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden.

The U.S. Department of Justice and lawyers for the unions involved in the case, which include the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers, and American Federation of Government Employees, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

 

A federal judge in Rhode Island in November ruled that the Trump administration could not shut down the mediation service or two other small agencies, extending an earlier preliminary ruling. The administration has appealed.

 

The mediation service was created in 1947 and primarily works to broker settlements in collective bargaining disputes through mediation and arbitration.

 

Private-sector employers must notify the agency if they intend to terminate or modify a union contract, and the FMCS then decides whether to intervene and offer mediation services. The agency is required to intervene in cases involving potential work stoppages in healthcare settings and the U.S. Postal Service.

 

The FMCS receives roughly 15,000 notices from employers each year and in 2024 supplied about 10,000 arbitrator panels and appointed more than 4,000 arbitrators to hear cases, according to filings in the unions' lawsuit.

 

The case is American Federation of Teachers v. Davis, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 25-cv-3072.

 

For the unions: Cole Hanzlicek and Elisabeth Oppenheimer of Bredhoff & Kaiser

For the Trump administration: Lawrence Fogelman and Rebecca Salk of the U.S. Department of Justice