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Trump vs. the Federal Workforce and Public Unions
President Donald Trump, in an effort to save taxpayer money and keep the federal government from having to borrow more than the $36 trillion it already owes, has made it clear that he wants to reduce headcount in the government, which is America's single largest employer, with over three million employees.
On day one of his administration, President Trump ordered a hiring freeze and moved forward from there.
His quest to right-size government is already shaping up as an uphill battle, as federal employee unions have vowed to fight his directives and have already filed lawsuits in opposition to his policy directives.
Trump signed executive orders requiring all employees to work at government offices rather than remotely, i.e., work at home, a policy put in place during the pandemic of 2020-21, that remains in force even though the threat of contracting illness or disease in work environments is minimal and has been for at least two years.
He also has offered buyouts to all federal employees. Those federal employees wishing to detach themselves from government service can voluntarily resign and receive roughly eight months severance pay, through September 8, 2025. Employees have until February 6 to accept the buyout offers.
The White House believes five to 10 percent of government employees could accept the terms of the buyouts, resulting in an annual savings of $70 to $100 billion. Military personnel are exempt from the buyouts.
The annual expense of paying government employee salaries and benefits is an amorphous number, estimated at somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 to $800 billion a year. Government salaries, set by congress, have ballooned to the point at which the average is well in excess of $100,000 a year, excluding benefits such as health care, travel expenses, and pension contributions.
On Friday, January 31, the president issued a memorandum to the heads of executive departments and agencies, titled, "Limiting Lame-Duck Collective Bargaining Agreements That Improperly Attempt to Constrain the New President."
The memo seeks to disallow collective bargaining agreements (CBA) executed in the 30 days prior to his inauguration. Cited in the memo is a Department of Education CBA finalized on January 17, 2025, three days before inauguration, that prohibited the department from returning remote employees to federal offices.
Other agencies and departments scurried, in the days after Trump's November election, to put in force CBAs designed to run counter to the President's policies.
In early December, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) finalized a five-year contract with the Social Security Administration, preserving the right to a minimum of two days of office work per week for 42,000 federal employees.
AFGE, the largest government employee union, representing 800,000 workers, issued a response to the memo, saying that the union would "aggressively defend" union contracts, setting the stage for what could be long, drawn-out court battles, appeals, and rulings.
Some background is essential to better understand what Trump is up against via federal unions opposing his policies and attempt to downsize the bloated federal bureaucracy.
Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft recognized the danger of federal employee organizations lobbying Congress and issued executive orders prohibiting federal employee membership in such organizations. Congress overturned these executive orders in the 1912 Lloyd-La Follette Act.
Section 2 of the Wagner Act (1935) explicitly exempted public employees from its coverage. Congress declared that the United States, states, and political subdivisions of states were not "employers" under the terms of the act.
A letter that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, widely and incorrectly blamed for the emergence of public sector unions, wrote to the President of the Federation of Federal Employees in 1937, in which he explained why collective bargaining cannot be a power granted to any public union.
In 1958, New York City passed legislation allowing public employees to bargain collectively, and Wisconsin followed suit after Democrats swept the state in the 1958 elections. Many other cities and states followed suit, until 1962, when it reached the federal level and President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10988, permitting federal employees to bargain collectively, though the right to bargain over wages and benefits remained under control of Congress. In 1978, Congress, via the Civil Service Reform Act (SCRA), codified this condition into law, when it was signed by President Jimmy Carter.
The CSRA abolished the U.S. Civil Service Commission and distributed its functions primarily among three new agencies: the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), thus expanding, diversifying, and bureaucratizing the scope of government employment relations.
In 1981, President Reagan fired air traffic controllers unionized by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), and won his battle, but lost the war, as the newly-hired air traffic controllers ultimately unionized under the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).
So, now we come to Trump, who will parry with the unions, but ultimately will win more battles though probably not the war. While Trump has not expressly declared war on the unions, he will have to deal with them and the effort will consume a good deal of time, lawyers and the patience of the American public.
The unions are deeply entrenched, their numbers expansive, and their public support (mainly on the left) is strong. What Trump will do is likely manage to whittle away some of the dead wood, the 20% of employees in any organization - public or private - that do little to no constructive work. Getting rid of 10-20% of government employees is no small task.
That's precisely where his offer of early retirement comes into play. Trump's gambit is that by offering eight month's severance pay to workers taking the buyout, he can lower the headcount in a multitude of departments and agencies, saving vast amounts of money in what is the government's largest expenditure across its entirety: payroll.
Beyond buyouts, the President has other tools at his disposal. Essentially the Chief Officer of the Executive Department, Trump has the power to order Reduction in Force (RIF) in order to reduce headcount, or shut down entire departments or agencies that he feels are not working for the American public. The Departments of Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, and others have been mentioned as candidates for complete overhaul or closure.
Trump could also resort to hardball tactics, such as moving departments to locations far removed from the nation's capital, a move that would likely result in many long-standing government employees to retire or resign.
Some, if not all, of Trump's actions will result in lawsuits and/or union actions, even strikes. The burden of government employees on the American taxpayer does not end with the federal government. It is a national disease. Total government payroll (federal, state, local) exceeds 23 million persons as of December 2024.
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For further information:
AFGA and AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) field lawsuits against the Trump administration on January 29.
FDR Library: Roosevelt and Federal Government Employee Unions
USA Facts: Age of Federal Workforce, hiring, retirement, charts:
Civil Service Reform Act of 1978
FedScope (Office of Personnel Management data sets)
Federal employment is over 3 million
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