You paid $181 million for union bosses to negotiate against you in 2024, but the Trump administration is doing something about it

Earlier this month, the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—essentially the human resources department for the entire 2 million-strong federal civilian workforce—released a report on how much the practice of collective bargaining cost federal taxpayers. Based on responses from federal agencies that complied with OPM requests for data, the federal government concluded that the public spent $181 million for unions to negotiate in their special interest and against the public interest at the federal level.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that the laws establishing federal-worker bargaining give the President lots of power to limit federal-worker bargaining, and the current administration—despite the fact it is influenced by leftist groups that have hurt its ability to make effective private-sector labor policy—is using it to ensure the government can administer its workplace in the taxpaying public’s interest.

How you ended up paying to negotiate against yourself

Government-worker collective bargaining, especially in the federal government, has long been “questioned,” to borrow then-Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge’s language from a letter condemning the 1919 Boston Police Strike. President Franklin Roosevelt, just a few years after signing the Wagner Act which nationalized and expanded the power of private-sector unions, advised the National Federation of Federal Employees that “the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

As late as 1959, the AFL-CIO executive committee could resolve that “government workers have no right [to collectively bargain] beyond the authority to petition Congress—a right available to every citizen.” But the needs of a Big Labor that was already passing its peak of private-sector influence and the massive opportunity presented by the power of the mid-century federal Democratic Party—long Big Labor’s ally in government—overrode honorable principles shortly thereafter. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10988, authorizing the first collective bargaining in the federal service.

After the Kennedy-Johnson Democrats left office, President Richard Nixon reaffirmed the powers of federal worker unions to operate with Executive Order 11491. (That Nixon was sympathetic to Big Labor even as he deemed union bosses as “enemies” extends far beyond this order.) By the Carter administration, mere executive action no longer satisfied Big Labor and its allies, and the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress enacted the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 which formally codified government-worker collective bargaining in the federal sector through the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS).

The ensuing half-century or so of government-worker bargaining saw little effort to constrain the system President Carter and his allies built. Before the second Trump administration, the most notable change to the structure of federal bargaining was the Gingrich Congress’s extension of collective bargaining to the legislative branch in a fit of short-sighted ostensible-good-government sensibility. Thus we pay $181 million to negotiate against ourselves.

What did anyone get for all this money?

So, taxpayers pay to negotiate with unions because the unions were extremely powerful in the Carter era’s dominant Democratic Party. What does the public get for this? The short answer is “practically nothing.”

“Labor peace” is not at issue. Federal worker unions are legally prohibited from striking, as they were firmly reminded when President Ronald Reagan sacked striking unionized air traffic controllers in 1981 despite the fact their union had endorsed him for election. (Such public-spiritedness in the face of a campaign supporter’s special interest is unbelievably rare, and not just in labor relations.)

Even the “usual” topics of labor-relations negotiations are not part of federal bargaining. As Molly Conway, who served as Chief of Staff to the Department of Labor in the first Trump administration, wrote in a primer for the Institute for the American Worker:

Management rights and any matters “specifically provided for by Federal statute” are not bargainable. This includes pay, health insurance, retirement, and certain workplace insurance (e.g., workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance), among others. [citations omitted]

So, if wages and benefits are out of bounds, what is in bounds? As U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), then the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, wrote to the Biden administration in 2024:

Moreover, federal agencies and unions negotiate over issues most taxpayers would consider a waste of time and attention. While it would be impossible to list all instances of negotiations over federal workplace minutia, examples include the addition of 14 inches in the height of cubicle desk panels (and “modesty panels” extending below the desk); designated smoking areas on an otherwise tobacco-free campus; and federal employees’ right to wear shorts, sweatpants, and spandex at work. [citations omitted]

The most inexcusable bargaining subject is literally paying government workers not to do government work, the practice known as “official time” or, in OPM’s more accurate phrasing, “Taxpayer-Funded Union Time” or TFUT. Among the things that unions are able to use TFUT to bargain for is more TFUT, and some of the TFUT may be used for advocacy that should properly be considered political. As Trey Kovacs wrote for Capital Research Center in 2013:

The Federal Labor Relations Authority, which governs labor-management relations within the federal government, has authorized the use of official time for lobbying activities. In a 2001 case, a court ordered that the Department of Defense award official time to the Association of Civilian Technicians (ACT) for union duties, including “visiting, phoning and writing to Congress in support of legislation which would impact the working conditions of employees represented by ACT.”

TFUT leads to the bizarre position where taxpayers must fund both the union-side and management-side representatives at the bargaining table, including staff time to negotiate and administer bargaining agreements, hire arbitrators, and pay for other CBA-related costs. According to OPM, total personnel compensation, both TFUT and government-side, for collective bargaining totaled $131 million in 2024.

Government worker unions should be abolished

In the grand scheme of a multi-trillion government budget, a trillion-dollar annual deficit, and tens of trillions of government debt, $181 million isn’t much, and the taxpayer wouldn’t necessarily get all of it back if government-worker bargaining were abolished. (Regular, non-collectively bargained human resources administration also costs money.) But the ridiculousness of taxpayers being forced to pay to negotiate trivialities like cubicle height against themselves demands that federal worker collective bargaining end, and the world return to the position that government workers have no special power over democratic policymaking than any other citizens or group of citizens petitioning their representatives.

Unfortunately, Congress is completely unlikely to do anything. (The House passed legislation earlier this year to expand federal unions; the Senate is, as of publication, not acting on it.) But the Carter-era Congress left a metaphorical time bomb under the federal collective bargaining regime it built. In its Cold War wisdom, the Congressional Democrats thought better than to allow core defense and national security personnel to bargain collectively. (This required more wisdom than one might think; the Dutch military was allowed to unionize around the same time the U.S. was considering FSLMRS.) Thus, legislators included the following language in the enacted FSLMRS:

The President may issue an order excluding any agency or subdivision thereof from coverage under this chapter if the President determines that–

(A)     the agency or subdivision has as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work, and

(B)     the provisions of this chapter cannot be applied to that agency or subdivision in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations.

Seeing a massive loophole, the potential for public savings (even if small), and an opportunity to assert executive power, President Donald Trump and his administration have driven through it. In two executive orders, EO 14241 and EO 14343, President Trump named a number of new agencies (or granted authority to agency heads to name new agencies) that he considered excludable from collective bargaining.

The Trump response has not been perfect. The National Review editors, who affirm that “federal workers should not be allowed to collectively bargain,” explain:

While Trump should use the CSRA’s power on areas that are truly related to national security, such as Defense and Homeland Security, the order follows a pattern of Trump’s actions by stretching the definition of “national security” beyond any reasonable bounds. The EPA is included, for example, and there’s simply no way that’s a national security agency.

Then, there’s the cronyism. The Border Patrol union endorsed Trump in the last election, and he has appointed the union’s former president, Brandon Judd, as ambassador to Chile. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency, is not included in the order. Border security clearly is national security, so leaving the Border Patrol union untouched is not justifiable.

This is the typical Republican sop to collective bargaining by police, whose unions tend not to be as committed to Everything Leftism as almost all other unions. Given that Everything Leftism often includes “defunding the police,” police unions’ behavior is explicable; given that aggressive Republican attempts to restrict police bargaining have blown up politically (most notably in Ohio after the 2010 midterms), Republicans’ concessions are explicable. (It does not make them good policy.)

Federal-worker unions have (naturally) sued to block the orders and are encouraging legislators to override them, but OPM is pressing ahead; following the orders, over half of federal workers are excluded from collective bargaining eligibility.

The public benefits to federal bargaining are effectively nonexistent. If federal workers have a problem with the policies Congress and the executive branch have established, they can act like any other citizen through the political process. They should not be entitled to use public money, government time, and special systems to change public policy.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/you-paid-181-million-for-union-bosses-to-negotiate-against-you-in-2024-but-the-trump-administration-is-doing-something-about-it/