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WASHINGTON – The National Treasury Employees Union is asking a federal judge to preserve the union rights of federal employees while NTEU’s legal challenge to President Trump’s March 27 executive order can be heard in court.

NTEU’s request for a preliminary injunction was filed today with U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman.

“NTEU seeks emergency relief to protect itself and the workers it represents from this unlawful attempt to eliminate collective bargaining for some two-thirds of the federal workforce,” the request states.

The administration’s executive order absurdly claims that allowing frontline workers at multiple federal agencies to join a union is a threat to national security, which is why NTEU sued on March 31.

“We all know this has nothing to do with national security and that the true goal here is to make it easier to fire federal employees across government,” said NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald. “Just five days after declaring the administration would no longer honor our contract with Health and Human Services, thousands of brilliant civil servants who work tirelessly to improve public health were let go for spurious reasons and little recourse to fight back.”

Congress declared 47 years ago that collective bargaining in the federal sector was in the public’s interest by giving employees a voice in the workplace and allowing labor and management to work together to help the federal government provide the services that Americans depend upon every day. While there is a narrow exemption in the law for groups of employees whose work directly impacts national security, Trump’s overreaching order is blatant retaliation against federal sector unions and ignores the laws passed by Congress that created the agencies and assigned them vital public service missions.

Blocking the implementation of the executive order would allow NTEU to continue to enforce our legally negotiated contracts at the agencies where we were elected to represent employees. In those agencies where a reduction-in-force has been announced, NTEU’s contracts provide appropriate time for employees to respond to a RIF notice and explore alternatives that can help mitigate the impact of the layoffs.

NTEU represents employees in 37 federal agencies and offices.