Jay Weber Show transcript 4-4-25
DC insiders are also still hyperventilating about President Trump’s executive order to end collective bargaining rights for at least half of the federal workers who have them.
Not all federal workers are unionized.
We have about 2.4-million federal workers, total, not counting the military or the post office.
Of those- 1.5 million are unionized.
Trump stripped the bargaining rights away from the employees of eight major departments- meaning about 700-thousand- or half- of unionized federal employees would lose their union rights.
Which is fantastic news to those of us who have never believed that govt workers should have the ability to unionize and-
A. Have the union on both sides of the bargaining table.
B. They could hold taxpayers and essential govt services hostage any time they want more money.
The editors of issues and insights are characterizing this as trump finally undoing JFK’s worst mistake.
It was Kennedy, back in 1962, who signed an executive order allowing federal workers the right to collectively bargain-
And this was decades after FDR, himself, explained why govt workers should not be allowed to unionize.
But- as is the case with all legislation now- the question is ‘how do you get it past the democrat filibuster’.
Any ‘stand alone’ bill like this -and any bill that can’t be shoehorned into a reconciliation bill- which isn’t subject to that filibuster rule-
Is going to have an impossible time getting approved in the US senate and sent to the president.
Republicans only have 53 senate votes. They need 60 in order to clear a filibuster. And a bill banning unionization of our govt employees-you can guarantee- would not get a single democrat vote.
So–it’s great to see the plans forming on stuff like this-and ‘so much’ of what president trump is doing can be ‘undone’ by the next president if congress doesn’t make it permanent-
That we really need mike johnson and john thune thinking outside the box and trying to find ways to get reforms like this- thru the senate- and onto trump’s desk.
But it’s a nearly impossible task.
And Trump isn’t taking away their collective bargaining rights to be mean. He’s doing it so that he-and every future president- can ‘better manage’ the federal workforce.
This is a president’s constitutional duty-and yet- over the decades- collective bargaining and unionization have been the single biggest hurdle against it.
And the associated unions have already sued to stop this Trump action, of course. And ‘as written’ the law probably isn’t on trump’s side when it comes to most of those agencies-
Which is why congress needs to act to alter-or kill off-the 1978 civil service reform act.
photo credit: Fox News
audio version of the segment here > Even FDR thought government workers shouldn't unionize