Trump can't strip Foreign Service workers of their collective bargaining rights, judge says

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge agreed Wednesday to temporarily block the Trump administration from stripping Foreign Service employees of their collective bargaining rights.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman granted a federal labor union's request for a preliminary injunction that, while its lawsuit against the government is pending, stops the Republican administration from implementing a key portion of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.

The American Foreign Service Association, which represents more than 18,000 members of the Foreign Service, sued to stop the administration over the March 27 executive order.

The union said Trump's order “upended decades of stable labor-management relations in the Foreign Service,” removing all members at the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development from coverage of a law that gives them the right to organize and bargain collectively.

In his opinion, Friedman said "Congress could not have been clearer in passing the Statute that it intended for the protections of the Statute to extend broadly to the covered departments and agencies in the foreign service.”

Government lawyers said Trump determined that “agencies with a primary national security focus are being hamstrung by restrictive terms of collective bargaining agreements that frustrate his ability to safeguard the interests of the American people.”

“The democratically-elected President’s determination regarding the public interest in that sphere is entitled to deference,” they wrote.

Plaintiffs' attorneys claim Trump issued the executive order to retaliate against labor unions and not to achieve any national security goals.

“Foreign Service employees have lost the ability to bargain collectively at a time when it matters the most, as the Administration continues to make significant, ongoing changes to employees’ working conditions and employment,” union attorneys wrote.

Last month, in a separate case, the same judge temporarily blocked the administration from canceling collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of federal employees. Friedman ruled that a key part of Trump’s executive order could not be enforced at roughly three dozen agencies and departments where employees are represented by the National Treasury Employees Union. The government appealed his decision.

Democratic President Bill Clinton nominated Friedman to the bench in 1994.