Trash Piles up in Union-Boss Stronghold Cities
The Teamsters garbage strike in and around Boston has been even uglier and more dangerous than DC 33’s, which ended July 9.
Federal Law Tramples Civil Servants’ Rights
Monopoly-Bargaining Repeal Would Restore Freedom of Association
Under a special-interest statute rammed through a Big Labor Congress and signed into law by the late President Jimmy Carter in 1978, federal civil servants who don’t want to join a union are prohibited from dealing directly with their employer on key matters concerning their jobs.
In practice, the cynically mislabeled “Civil Service Reform Act,” or CSRA, forces federal employees to associate themselves with advocacy groups they find philosophically, politically, and/or morally objectionable by accepting their representation at the bargaining table.
The only other options for dissenting civil servants are to quit their jobs, or be fired.
President Seeks to Free, For Now, 618,000 Federal Workers From Union Control
Early this spring, President Donald Trump took two significant steps that challenge the CSRA’s trampling of federal workers’ First Amendment rights.
On March 27, Mr. Trump, citing a CSRA provision that empowers him to prohibit union monopoly bargaining over federal employees charged with defending national security, issued an executive order reducing the number of federal civil servants who are subject to union “exclusivity” by roughly 75%.
Partly because it expands the definition of “national security” so that even employees of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services are included, E.O.14251 is now being vigorously challenged by union lawyers in several court cases.
On the same day E.O.14251 was issued, Mr. Trump also filed a federal lawsuit contending that, notwithstanding any and all CSRA provisions to the contrary, the President and his appointees have authority under Article II of the Constitution to terminate all federal union monopoly bargaining.
National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix commented: “The Trump Administration is to be commended for advancing and advocating for policy changes that have the effect of freeing an estimated 618,000 federal civil servants from Big Labor control.
“Unfortunately, even assuming it eventually survives all of Big Labor’s court challenges, E.O.14251 could quickly be reversed by a future Big Labor President. The permanent liberation of federal workers from Big Labor collectivism will almost certainly require congressional action.
“That’s why Committee legislative staffers are now seeking to build congressional support for S.1006, a pending measure that would statutorily prohibit union monopoly bargaining over all types of federal employees.”
From 2012 to 2022, AFGE Had ‘Highest Conviction Rate’ of Any U.S. Union
Many federal civil servants would prefer not to have the bosses of a federal union such as the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) or the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) speak for them regarding key workplace matters. There are an array of good reasons why.
Political partisanship is one. In 2023- 24, AFGE PAC contributions went to Democrat politicians over their GOP counterparts by a 20-to-one margin. And the NTEU PAC favored Democrats over Republicans by 56-to-one!
Many of the hundreds of thousands of civil servants who are registered Republicans reasonably believe federal union bosses who spend much of their time campaigning for candidates those same workers oppose understandably conclude the AFGE and the NTEU don’t speak for them.
Moreover, federal workers of all political stripes have ample grounds to be concerned about rampant unethical practices.
As labor-policy specialists James Sherk and Jacob Sagert pointed out in a 2023 report drawing on data from the U.S. Labor Department, the AFGE accounted for more than 10% of all “union corruption convictions” between 2012 and 2022, despite representing “just 2% of all unionized workers.”
Over the decade they analyzed, concluded Mr. Sherk and Mr. Sagert, the AFGE had “the highest conviction rate” of any U.S. union.
Former AFGE Czar Reportedly Exploited His Power to Commit Sexual Assault
Recent Labor Department and media reports indicate embezzlement of civil servants’ dues money continues to be rampant in the AFGE, the largest federal union in the U.S.
For example, on March 24 this year, the Baltimore Sun reported that Kimberly Goodwin — the former top boss of AFGE Local 2419, which wields monopoly-bargaining control over employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Maryland — had been indicted on wirefraud and money-laundering charges.
The indictment states that Ms. Goodwin acted in cahoots with her successor as Local 2419 president and another union official to embezzle nearly a million dollars in union funds!
A May 28 investigative report for USA Today by Erin Mansfield furnished compelling evidence of equally outrageous abuse of federal employees’ dues money by local officers of the National Treasury Employees Union, the second-largest federal union, in San Francisco, Calif.
ederal union, in San Francisco, Calif. According to Ms. Manfield, when top officials at NTEU headquarters in Washington, D.C., were informed about apparent financial wrongdoing in NTEU Chapter 212, they retaliated against the whistleblower instead of punishing the miscreants!
The Sherk-Sagert report showed that corruption in the AFGE also evidently flows from the top.
According to a lawsuit filed against the AFGE by a driver who once did contract work for the union for a decade, former AFGE President J. David Cox used the threat of cancellation of this contract, the sole source of the driver’s income, to coerce him into performing oral sex on Mr. Cox.
Current Top AFGE Bosses Allegedly Covered up Former President’s Crimes
The lawsuit (Doe #1 v. Am. Fed’n of Gov’t Empls. Second Am. Compl.) further alleges that other high-ranking AFGE bosses — including then-District 5 Vice President Everett Kelley, now national president — knew Mr. Cox was a serial sexual predator, and covered up his crimes instead of trying to stop them.
The AFGE National Executive Council also winked at Mr. Cox’s repeated abuse of dues-financed limousines for “unexplained, late night and weekend” jaunts that apparently had nothing to do with his job as a union boss.
Although they reportedly conspired to get Mr. Cox off the hook for sexual misconduct and embezzlement, Mr. Kelley and his cohorts are also said to have aggressively used the AFGE’s disciplinary process to prosecute potential union political adversaries for alleged minor infractions.
Mr. Mix commented:
“I cannot imagine why any of the many honest, hard-working people who are employed today as unionized federal servants, whether they personally belong to the union or not, would choose to have anything to do with the AFGE or the NTEU brass.
“Unfortunately, current federal law gives such employees no say in the matter, and, as much as he apparently wants to, President Trump does not have the unilateral power, barring a dramatic shift in the judiciary’s understanding of labor law, to unshackle all civil servants from Big Labor, once and for all.
“That’s why the Committee is pushing this year for a hearing and a floor vote on S.1006, the Federal Workforce Reform Act.
“Sponsored by pro-Right to Work Sen. Marsha Blackburn [R-Tenn.], this bill would immediately terminate all federal union monopoly-bargaining schemes.”
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