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Washington D.C. – In the wake of NTEU’s legal victory striking down core elements of a series of executive orders, federal agencies have responded with mixed messages.

“Several agencies had taken actions of varying degrees to carry out the executive orders,” said NTEU National President Tony Reardon. “With the judge’s decision unequivocal in affirming the agency obligation of good faith bargaining, it is time for agencies to fulfill that obligation.”

In May, President Donald Trump issued three executive orders aimed at limiting federal employee rights, collective bargaining rights and the ability of unions to represent employees in workplace issues. NTEU and several other unions sued and ten days ago a federal judge ruled that nine provisions in the executive orders violated existing federal law and could not be implemented.

On Friday Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to the Directors of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). 

The letter seeks detailed information and a briefing from the administration about its plans and timelines to comply with the judge’s orders, as well as for its guidance and direction to certain agencies to return to the bargaining table and to their respective overall bargaining status prior to the issuance of the executive orders.  

At the time of the decision, NTEU was bargaining open contracts at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Social Security’s Office of Hearings Operations (OHO). The union had received notice from the IRS Office of Chief Counsel that it intended to move forward with limitations on the time union officials could use for employee representation.

Since the court decision, Chief Counsel has pulled back its notice. “Chief Counsel correctly and immediately pulled back its notice of intent,” Reardon said.

In a telephone call last week, officials from Social Security indicated that the agency will comply with the order from the court. SSA has said it will be rescinding the implementation of the provisions of the executive orders that it unilaterally implemented, but the details have yet to be worked out. NTEU intends to ensure that the rescission of its actions is carried out completely and expeditiously.

“SSA had taken drastic action that NTEU opposed from the start. Given the posture of the agency it has a lot of work to do to return to the environment we should be in,” Reardon said.

NTEU is still awaiting a response from HHS, despite sending a letter early last week demanding that department negotiators return to the bargaining table and follow the agreed-upon bargaining schedule. After only two unusually short days of bargaining, the agency issued a take-it-or-leave-it directive and walked away from the bargaining table.

“HHS cast aside any pretense of actually bargaining with NTEU in the hopes that it could simply eviscerate employee and union rights,” Reardon said. “NTEU’s legal victory is proof positive that the bulldozer approach taken by HHS will not work. They must sit down with us and bargain a real agreement. NTEU is prepared to do that.”

NTEU represents 150,000 employees at 33 federal agencies and departments.