<div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn" data-testid="companionColumn-0"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">President Trump expanded his wide-reaching effort to strip union protections from federal employees on Thursday, signing an <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/further-exclusions-from-the-federal-labor-management-relations-program/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="">executive order</a> that commanded roughly half a dozen government agencies to end their collective bargaining agreements with unions representing their employees.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Those agencies included NASA; the National Weather Service and the <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="">National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service</a>; the United States Agency for Global Media, which manages federally funded news agencies like <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/us/politics/voice-of-america-trump-kari-lake.html" title="">Voice of America</a>; the <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/organizational-offices/office-commissioner-patents" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="">Office of the Commissioner for Patents</a>; and units of the <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.usbr.gov/main/about/mission.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="">Bureau of Reclamation</a> that operate 53 hydroelectric power plants across the country.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">If the agencies comply with the order, union employees will lose the rights and protections provided by the <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://afgenvac.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2023-AFGE-Master-Agreement-1.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="">collective bargaining agreements</a>. Those rights typically include the right to have work disputes resolved by a neutral arbitrator and to have union stewards and leaders be granted official time on the job to work on cases and participate in collective contract negotiations.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">As he has previously, Mr. Trump framed his expanded order <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/us/politics/trump-unions-executive-order.html" title="">stripping federal workers of labor protections</a> as critical for <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/08/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-exempts-agencies-with-national-security-missions-from-federal-collective-bargaining-requirements-6a95/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="">protecting national security</a>. Unions representing federal workers have argued that Mr. Trump’s actions were instead a form of retaliation against unions that have <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/business/economy/government-union-trump-musk.html" title="">participated in a barrage of lawsuits</a> opposing the president’s policies.</p></div><aside aria-label="companion column" class="css-ew4tgv"></aside></div><div data-testid="Dropzone-1"></div><div class="css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn" data-testid="companionColumn-1"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers, said it was “preparing an immediate response" to the order, but it did not give details. The union previously sued to block Mr. Trump’s plan to end collective bargaining with federal unions across a swath of government agencies.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">“This latest executive order is another clear example of retaliation against federal employee union members who have bravely stood up against his anti-worker, anti-American plan to dismantle the federal government,” Everett Kelley, the president of the A.F.G.E., said in a statement. “Several agencies, including NASA and the National Weather Service, have already been hollowed out by reckless DOGE cuts, so for the administration to further disenfranchise the remaining workers in the name of ‘efficiency’ is immoral and abhorrent.”</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Earlier this month, <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/us/politics/collective-bargaining-ninth-circuit.html" title="">a federal appeals court panel</a> allowed Mr. Trump to move ahead with the original executive order, which covered more than a million workers across a broad swath of the government, including some agencies with no obvious national security portfolio like the Department of Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">The Trump administration then moved forward with the order, even though it had said in court that it would not do so until the legal battle over Mr. Trump’s plan had concluded. Some agencies moved to end collective bargaining agreements almost immediately. The Department of Veterans Affairs <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/us/politics/trump-federal-workers-unions.html" title="">stripped more than 400,000 of its workers</a> of union protections, and <a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/us/politics/trump-epa-union-contracts.html" title="">the E.P.A. followed soon after</a>. Other agencies have not yet begun that process.</p></div><aside aria-label="companion column" class="css-ew4tgv"></aside></div>