IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The biggest union for federal workers is planning to put off greater than half of its workers nationwide after President Donald Trump’s government actions have quickly weakened the group’s funds, the union mentioned Thursday.
The American Federation of Authorities Workers will transfer forward with a discount in pressure that would minimize its 355 workers to roughly 150, eliminating organizers, nationwide representatives, assist workers and others.
The layoffs will weaken a number one opponent to Trump’s dramatic reshaping of the federal authorities.
AFGE has filed a flurry of lawsuits searching for to dam every thing from the mass firings of probationary workers to the sharing of delicate information with billionaire Elon Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity. It has additionally helped set up protests and different pushback in opposition to Trump and DOGE.
In an announcement after its nationwide government council authorized the plan Thursday, the union blamed Trump’s insurance policies for the layoffs, calling them a setback, “however not the top of AFGE — not by a longshot.”
“We won’t be deterred, silenced or intimidated into submission,” the assertion mentioned. “Whether or not it is within the courts, on Capitol Hill, or within the press, AFGE will proceed to face tall and defend the rights of America’s civil servants so long as it takes.”
The White Home has declared AFGE a “hostile” group that has an excessive amount of energy over how the federal government features.
Trump signed an order last month searching for to strip union rights from roughly 600,000 of the 800,000 federal staff that AFGE represents, together with these on the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense. The Department of Homeland Security beforehand eliminated union rights from 47,000 Transportation Safety Administration staff.
The union is difficult these strikes in courtroom, arguing they’re unlawful and retaliatory.
After Trump’s orders, companies have stopped permitting workers to have their union membership dues robotically deducted from their paychecks, hanging on the union’s funds. The union has been engaged in a frenetic push to persuade members to pay dues by means of digital checking account withdrawals, however nonetheless expects to see a big discount in income.
The downsizing is anticipated to chop greater than 100 workers who work underneath the nationwide AFGE president’s workplace, and dozens extra who work across the nation for the union’s 12 districts.
One union president mentioned the workers cuts could be devastating for the flexibility of AFGE’s native unions to symbolize workers.
“It’s going to demolish us,” mentioned Justin Youngblood, president of an AFGE chapter that represents staff at a VA hospital in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri. “That’s going to chop the legs off of AFGE and all the locals.”
He mentioned the union’s nationwide management ought to have been higher ready to handle an anticipated downturn in income throughout Trump’s second time period.
The information comes days after AFGE organized a city corridor in Kansas Metropolis the place scores of federal staff denounced the mass firings, reorganizations and chaotic return-to-office mandates that they’ve endured underneath Trump’s new time period.
Workers haven’t been notified which ones can be minimize however earlier acquired notices from the union that everlasting layoffs might take impact as early as June.
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