Fighting For Our Rights

Over the past year, AFGE and our federal union siblings have been subject to the largest union-busting effort our country has ever seen. On March 27th, 2025, Trump signed an Executive Order ("EO") declaring that the EPA and several other departments and agencies are primarily responsible for advancing national security interests, and are therefore not eligible for collective bargaining. In short, because of a mischaracterization of the work that we do, in the eyes of this administration, we can no longer have union rights. The Trump administration has cancelled the collective bargaining agreements ("CBAs") of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, including ours.

Here is what we are doing to win our union rights back:

LEGISLATION

• Our local has advocated to the elected representatives in Region 2 to ask that they vote for the Protect America's Workforce Act ("PAWA"), which if signed into law would protect federal workers' collective bargaining rights.

  • PAWA was passed by the House of Representatives on December 11, 2025. It is now in committee in the Senate.

  • The two representatives whose final action of signing a discharge petition brought PAWA to the House floor for a vote, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY), are representatives in our region that we did extensive and repeated outreach to.

LITIGATION

During 2025, AFGE filed 17 lawsuits against the Trump administration on behalf of its members. While litigation of this magnitude does take a lot of time to resolve, there have been some recent wins at other agencies. For example:

• TSA members have maintained their union contract despite effort to terminate it.

• NIOSH members who were given illegal RIF notices have been reinstated.

• The VA won their collective bargaining rights back in a novel case based on a specific violation of their workers' First Amendment right to protest.

There are litigation trackers out there keeping tabs on all of the cases that would impact federal workers. This AFGE National site has a recent summary of those cases, and this litigation tracker is updated regularly.

The case in which AFGE is fighting for our union contract is called American Federation Of Government Employees, AFL-CIO v. Trump, Case No. 3:25-cv-03070 (N.D. Cal.), 25-4014 (9th Cir.). This case was filed on April 3, 2025, and it argues that the EO Trump signed should be invalidated for a variety of reasons. If we win this case, we will get our union rights back.

Litigation takes a long time, and often has a lot of stops and started. On June 24, 2025, the district court granted a preliminary injunction in this case. Preliminary injunctions ("PIs") serve as a stay, or stop, on whatever action is being taken, that keeps things as they were before the action was taken until the court can decide whether or not the action is legal. 

In this case, the PI would have prevented the Trump administration from invalidating our CBA. However, on August 1, 2025, the Ninth Circuit granted the administration's request to stop the PI. Then, on February 26, 2026, the Ninth Circuit vacated the PI completely.

You might notice from these descriptions that no court has made any determinations on whether or not the EO was legal--that is because the facts of the case, or "the merits," have not been discussed yet. The Ninth Circuit also ruled in February 2026 that the court does have jurisdiction to rule on the merits of this case, so now they will actually hear arguments and make a ruling.

As more developments happen, we will update this page!

If you have questions about  how we are fighting for our union contract, or are wondering how to join the fight, please email us at info@afge3911.org.