The Trump administration is once again cracking down on government unions, suggesting they are interfering with work done by the thousands of federal employees they represent.
The Office of Personnel Management, in a memorandum sent Thursday to agency heads, directed that they provide reports accounting for the time federal employees spent at union functions and events in the previous fiscal budget cycle, which ran from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024.
The memo from Charles Ezell, OPM’s acting director, implies that employees have spent too much time meeting on union issues during work hours, and that OPM wants each agency director to take steps to ensure such time is allowed “only in amounts that are reasonable, necessary, and in the public interest.”
“Federal employees should be fully committed to doing their jobs on behalf of the American people, not conducting union activities on the taxpayers’ dime,” Anna Kelly, White House deputy press secretary, said in an emailed statement to POLITICO’s E&E News.
Ezell’s memo directs agency heads to provide it with the “total value of the free or discounted use of government property for labor organizations or individuals on taxpayer-funded union time” in fiscal 2024, as well as “expenses the agency paid for activities conducted on taxpayer-funded union time.”
OPM also wants agencies to report the “total number of hours each employee received pay and the total number of hours spent on taxpayer-funded union time.”
The memo sets a March 14 deadline for agency heads to provide OPM with the report.
Subsequently, and also for fiscal 2024, the OPM memo requests a separate report by April 1 denoting how “many hours did each agency” allow for “labor organizations, or employees of the agency for whom [taxpayer funded union time] was authorized, to use that agency real property (e.g., offices, cubicles, or other space within an agency facility) at no cost or at a discounted rate? How much was each agency reimbursed with respect to the use of agency real property provided at no cost or at a discounted rate?”
An OPM spokesperson declined to comment.
But a spokesperson for the American Federation of Government Employees blasted the memo, accusing the Trump administration of “using the Office of Personnel Management to harass and intimidate federal employees.”
The AFGE statement added: “The memorandum stigmatizes something that is completely lawful and routine: federal employees’ elected representatives engaging in representation. ‘Taxpayer funded union time’ doesn’t exist — it is an anti-union buzzword used to distort and defame employee representatives executing their legal duties.”
‘Restore efficiency and accountability’
The memo falls in line with a broader effort by President Donald Trump and his administration to reshape the federal government and its workforce. Some congressional Republicans have also tried to crack down in recent years on federal employee union work.
The administration in the past two weeks has fired thousands of federal employees still on a one-year probationary period. Thousands more accepted the president’s “Fork in the Road” offer to be paid through September if they agreed to leave the federal workforce.
The memo comes a couple of days after Ezell and Russell Vought, director of the White House budget office, issued guidance on how agency heads should proceed with “large-scale reductions in force,” as well as plans for reorganizing agencies. The first phase of those plans must be submitted by March 13.
The second phase directed agencies by April 14 to submit separate plans that, among other things, detail steps each agency will take to renegotiate “provisions of collective bargaining agreements that would inhibit government efficiency and cost-savings.”
Trump, according to Ezell’s Thursday memo, “has promised to restore efficiency and accountability in the Federal Government. Doing so is crucial to improve the ability of agencies to deliver mission outcomes, provide excellent service, and effectively steward taxpayer dollars.”
As such, the document directs agency heads to “authorize taxpayer-funded union time only in amounts that are reasonable, necessary, and in the public interest and to monitor its use to see that it is used efficiently.”
The latest OPM memo comes roughly a month after Trump issued an presidential memorandum to agencies telling them not to recognize any collective bargaining agreement that was agreed to and signed within 30 days of his Jan. 20 inauguration.
“Such last-minute, lame-duck CBAs, which purport to bind a new President to his predecessor’s policies, run counter to America’s system of democratic self-government,” Trump’s memo said.
Friction at Interior
The issue of union activity involving federal employees during work hours has already caused friction in recent weeks.
For example, Bureau of Land Management staffers that are members of the National Treasury Employees Union headquarters Chapter 341 that have recently requested time during work hours to meet with union representatives were told they could not do so, according to an email reviewed by E&E News.
In the case of Chapter 341, the issue involves a collective bargaining agreement that the Trump administration does not recognize as valid.
The headquarters chapter representing nearly 300 nonsupervisory staffers had negotiated a collective bargaining agreement that employees voted to ratify in December, and that Laura Daniel-Davis, the then-acting deputy Interior secretary, signed Jan. 17, just days before Trump’s inauguration.
Two days prior to Daniel-Davis signing a mandatory agency head review approving the collective bargaining agreement, Jennifer Ackerman, director of the Interior’s Office of Human Capital, formally rejected the agreement for specific reasons that have not been made public.
“Therefore, your request for the use of duty time to confer with the Union Representative ‘concerning matters related to the CBA’ is denied because there is not a CBA in effect,” according to the email reviewed by E&E News that was sent to staffers requesting to meet with union representatives.
A BLM spokesperson said in an emailed statement Friday that the bureau and the union have kept the lines of communications open, and that “negotiations with NTEU Chapter 341 on a collective bargaining union remain ongoing.”
This reporter can be reached on Signal at s_streater.80.
