By Michael Kunzelman
Washington (AP) – A federal judge temporarily prevented the Trump administration from implementing a decree which, according to a union, would cancel collective negotiation rights for hundreds of thousands of federal employees.
US District Judge Paul Friedman judged that a key element of President Donald Trump’s order on March 27 cannot be applied in approximately three dozen agencies and departments where employees are represented by the National Union of Treasury Employees.
The union, which represents nearly 160,000 workers from federal government employees, continued to challenge Trump’s order. The union said that it would lose more than half of its income and more than two -thirds of its members if the judge refused his preliminary injunction request.
Friedman said he issued an opinion in several days to explain his two -page order. The decision is not the last word in the trial. He gave lawyers until May 2 to submit a proposal on how the case should take place.
Certain agencies, including the FBI, are exempt from a law obliging federal agencies to negotiate work organizations on employment issues. Presidents may apply the exemption to agencies which have a “primary function” of the execution of intelligence, counterintelligence, investigation or national security work.
But no president before Trump tried to use the national security exemption to exclude an entire agency at the level of the law requirements, according to the employee union. He said Trump’s order is designed to facilitate exact mass fire and “political revenge” against federal unions opposed to his program.
“The use by the president of the exemption from close national security of the law to cancel the major part of the coverage of the law is clearly in contradiction with the expressed intention of the congress,” wrote the lawyers of the Union.
Government lawyers argued that the order of the court requested by the union would interfere with the president’s duty to ensure that federal workers are ready to protect national security.
“It is essential that agencies with a main objective of national security are sensitive and responsible for the American people.” Lawyers from the Ministry of Justice wrote.
The IRS is the largest negotiation unit represented by the National Union of Treasury Employees. One day after Trump signed his order, the administration continued a chapter of the Union in Kentucky to request a decision that she can terminate collective negotiation for IRS.
The union says that the administration has “actually conceded” that its members do not do a national security work. The members of the union affected by the decree also include employees of the Department of Health and Social Services, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Communications Commission.
The union said that it would lose around 25 million dollars in contributions in the next year. Some agencies, he says, have already ceased to deduce union contributions from employee remuneration.
“In the absence of an injunctive preliminary recovery, Nteu may no longer be able to exist significantly for federal workers for whom he is fighting,” wrote the lawyers of the Union.
Government prosecutors argued that the courts have generally withdrawn from the president’s judgment on national security issues.
“The executive actions which are valid with the caliber-that is to say within the legal authority of the executive-are entitled to a presumption of regularity,” they wrote.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
