WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Metal Trades Department, AFL-CIO applauds the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia’s ruling, issued late Friday, on the legality of Trump’s three Executive Orders gutting collective bargaining for federal workers.
Just before Memorial Day, Donald Trump signed three executive orders affecting more than 300,000 federal workers right to union representation in their workplace. The Metal Trades Department, in its alliance with a dozen other labor organizations—the Federal Workers Alliance (FWA)—then filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to block implementation of the orders, challenging their legality.
The court ruling, in part, declared that President Trump’s Executive Orders, to the extent that they conflict with the will of Congress, are invalid.
“All workers deserve the right to union representation. This most recent attack by the Trump Administration is just another example of those in power attempting to usurp workers’ rights. Thankfully, the courts saw the attacks for what they were, an illegal attempt to use Presidential powers to nullify existing laws,” said James Hart, president of the Metal Trades Department.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s decision enjoined the President’s subordinates from implementing or enacting the following provisions from the Executive Orders:
EO #13836 (restrictions on collective bargaining order), ordered invalid:
5(a) setting timelines for bargaining
5(c) revoking LM partnerships
6 removing permissive subjects from bargaining
EO #13837 (use of official time), ordered invalid:
3(a) official time limits per bargaining unit
4(a) lobbying on official time
4(b) advance written notice for official time
EO #13389 (removal procedures)
3 negotiating grievance procedures out of CBAs
4(a) removing grievable subjects like performance reviews
4(c) 30 days to get into compliance (like PIPs)
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The Metal Trades Department is a trade department of the AFL-CIO. It was chartered in 1908 to coordinate negotiating, organizing and legislative efforts of affiliated metalworking and related crafts and trade unions. Seventeen national and international unions are affiliated with the MTD today. More than 100,000 workers in private industry and federal establishments work under contracts negotiated by MTD Councils. Workers retain membership in their own trade unions.
The Federal Workers Alliance is a coalition of 13 labor unions that represent more than 300,000 federal government workers employed in hundreds of occupations ranging from teachers in Department of Defense Dependent Schools, to Immigration Judges, to NASA rocket scientists, to welders at naval shipyards