Fedweek

In what could just the opening of a long legal battle, federal unions have filed suits against two of President Trump’s three executive orders on disciplinary and labor-management policies.

Both the AFGE and NTEU unions have challenged, in separate federal district courts, the order on official time, which federal employees with union roles may use during working hours to perform certain union-related duties. Under the order, no employee could be in official time status more than 25 percent of working hours, it could not be used to assist with another employee in a negotiated grievance procedure, agencies would aim in negotiations to allow only an average of one hour annually per bargaining unit employee—about a third of the current government-wide average—and use of the time would be subject to approval of management.

By law, federal unions must represent all bargaining unit employees regardless of whether they pay dues, and the order will hamper them in carrying out that obligation, the suits charge. The order further “restrains and retaliates against AFGE and its union-member employee representatives in and for the exercise of their respective rights to expressive association,” as the AFGE suit put it. AFGE afterward was joined in its suit by the AFSCME union.

NTEU further filed suit against the order regarding disciplinary policy, saying that restricting a “performance improvement period” to no more than 30 days denies employees of the reasonable “opportunity to demonstrate acceptable performance” that they are guaranteed under civil service law before being disciplined on performance grounds.