On Friday, April 25, Judge Paul Friedman of the District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order granting the National Treasury Employees Union’s (NTEU) motion for a preliminary injunction, temporarily blocking the March 27 Executive Order (EO) attempting to outlaw collective bargaining with several Federal unions.
The EO aimed to amend an Executive Order from 1979 by adding “addition exclusions” to preexisting exemptions from the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program.
Specifically, the EO sought to exempt employees in the Department of State, Defense, Treasury, Veteran Affairs, and several other agencies deemed to be involved with national security from collective bargaining in the name of safeguarding American interests.
In its suit, NTEU alleged that the new EO “guts Congress’s federal sector collective bargaining regime” and “strips the collective bargaining rights of hundreds of thousands of federal employees across a number of agencies.”
Judge Friedman has yet to issue an opinion explaining his reasoning granting the preliminary injunction but promised to do so at a later date.
The Order states that the EO is “unlawful as applied to the Defendants who are heads of agencies with employees represented by” the union and “with the exception of Donald Trump” the defendants are enjoined from implementing section 2 of the EO. The Order also provides that the parties should meet and confer and file a joint status report by May 2, 2025.
This Order means that, for now, the collective bargaining rights of federal employees will remain intact. We will continue to update you.