With January fast approaching, federal workers are bracing for the new reality under President Donald Trump — and they’re worried about their jobs.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whom Trump appointed to co-lead the new government advisory board, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have vowed to cut roughly $2 trillion in spending, with the nearly 3 million civil service workers high on the proverbial chopping block.
In a recent op-ed, the tech CEOs called for “mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy.” To do that, though, they’ll have to overcome one major hurdle: federal labor unions.
As of 2023, roughly 25 percent of the federal workforce was unionized, with union membership steadily rising. Many of these unions have rushed to extend or secure favorable collective bargaining agreements that put in place protections for federal employees ahead of Trump taking office.
If Musk, Ramaswamy, and Trump want to fire federal employees en masse, they’ll have to go through these unions, which have the wherewithal to enforce federal regulations designed to prevent an incoming president from clearing house.
The challenge isn’t exactly news to the incoming administration. Toward the end of his first term, Trump turned his sights on federal workers unions. He issued three executive orders weakening their ability to bargain on behalf of members. When he came to power, President Joe Biden overturned the orders.
“I think it’s going to be much worse this time.”
Four years later, though, labor leaders and experts predict that an emboldened and prepared Trump will wreak havoc on federal labor unions. Backed by an anti-labor agenda crafted by conservative policy shops like the America First Policy Institute and Project 2025, Trump’s forthcoming assault could have catastrophic consequences for federal workers and the American public.
“They are absolutely going to attack unions, there’s no question,” said Ben Olinsky, a senior vice president of structural reform and governance at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “I think across the board we should expect that Trump is coming into office, A) with an actual plan, and B) with folks who have been thinking about how to implement it and execute it when he came into office last time.”
“So I think it’s going to be much worse this time.”
Trump’s Anti-Labor Braintrust
In addition to Musk and Ramaswamy, Trump has surrounded himself with people hellbent on shrinking the federal workforce and weakening their labor unions.
Education secretary nominee Linda McMahon, Agriculture secretary nominee Brooke Rollins, and Housing and Urban Development secretary nominee Scott Turner all come straight from the America First Policy Institute, a right-wing think tank that emerged four years ago and has quietly gained significant influence over the incoming administration.
The America First Policy Institute routinely criticizes federal labor unions, calling, for instance, on Congress to prohibit federal labor unions from engaging in the grievance process over firings. In its policy agenda, the group argued that federal labor unions should have to “reimburse taxpayers for using agency resources,” called for the entire federal civil service to be moved to at-will employment, and once again argued that labor unions shouldn’t be able to appeal firings in outside arbitration, a process which protects federal workers from unfair removals.
Photo: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Republicans in Congress have already seized on some of these ideas. Last week, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., reintroduced the MERIT Act, which would make it easier to fire federal workers and prohibit federal unions from filing grievances over firings, working conditions, and mass layoffs.
Another road for Trump to mass-firing federal employees is “Schedule F.” At the end of Trump’s last term, the former president issued an executive order moving nonpartisan civil servants into a new employment category designated for political appointees. The new category, known as Schedule F, makes it easier to fire these federal workers for any reason, including their political ideology.
Olinksy, of the Center for American Progress, argued that Trump will likely move quickly to get as many federal employees into Schedule F as possible, while also reissuing the three executive orders limiting federal unions’ bargaining power.
“I’m not a betting person, but I bet on the fact that they would create a new Schedule F awfully quickly,” said Olinsky. “I think, to the extent they can, they’re going to use those as tools to try to drive out anyone you know that they wouldn’t want there.”
These myriad threats are constantly on Jacqueline Simon’s mind.
“The federal employee unions are the only thing that stands between Ramaswamy, Musk, Trump, and the complete obliteration of the federal government,” said Simon, the policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal labor union in the country.
“Federal employees are often portrayed in the media as lazy, incompetent, worthless people.”
Simon said unions like hers are the reason DOGE can’t just come in, ignore federal law, and fire everyone. Instead, such hasty moves would be slowed down by processes put in place thanks to union organizing — notably the grievance process that allows the union to enter into arbitration on behalf of federal workers facing removal.
Federal workers are easy targets politically, Simon said.
“Federal employees are often portrayed in the media as lazy, incompetent, worthless people. I think there’s a lot of racism in that, too,” she said.
Although a slim majority of the federal workforce is white, it’s significantly more racially diverse than the country overall, with Black Americans consistently overrepresented in federal government jobs.
Target: Everyone
Workers would not be the only ones at risk if Trump successfully weakened federal labor protections because their work directly touches so many Americans’ lives.
One of the groups that AFGE represents, for instance, is food and safety inspectors within the Department of Agriculture.
“So,” said Simon, “if we deregulate food safety standards and get rid of the inspectors that are inside the slaughterhouses and the meat processing plants, then diseased animals will make it into the food supply, and we will have more pandemics because, after all, where did this pandemic come from? It came from other animals into humans.”
Retirees are another group that should be concerned, said Simon. About half of retirees rely on their Social Security checks for 100 percent of their post-retirement income. Mass firings could hinder the ability of the agency to get people their vital checks in a timely manner. Simon.
“It’ll just be more poverty, among the elderly,” she said.
Veterans are another at-risk group. Republicans have made no bones about their efforts to privatize the Veteran Affairs Department and downsize the existing, already beleaguered staff. Without strong unions to stop them, progressives in Congress argue they’ll be one step closer to their goal.
“They don’t want unions,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill. “They want to be able to ensure their buddies, when they privatize services, are able to get top-dollar profit. And when we’re talking about worker rights, worker benefits, and their wages — that impacts their billionaire buddies’ bottom line.”
“When they’re coming after those federal employees, they’re directly coming after the American people.”
The reductions in VA health care workers is bound to hit veterans hard, said Ramirez, particularly vulnerable people and those from minority communities.
“They’re going to really target — as they are in many departments, and particularly in the VA — the most vulnerable veterans, oftentimes women and Black and brown veterans,” she said.
The cascading effects of cuts to the federal workforce means that, while Trump and DOGE may say they are only targeting a bloated bureaucracy, they’re actually targeting everyone.
“These federal employees are responsible for either providing direct services or establishing the kind of programming necessary for the government to work for the American people,” she said. “When they’re coming after those federal employees, they’re directly coming after the American people.”