UNITED STATES
In what has been seen as a victory for US President, Donald Trump in his long-running battle with the country’s Public Service, a Federal Appeals Court in Washington, DC, has rejected a union challenge to the Administration’s tough new workplace rules.
The decision by the Court of Appeals reverses a ruling last year striking down key provisions in three of Mr Trump’s Executive Orders that rolled back Public Service protections, making it easier to fire employees and weaken their union representation.
The Orders, which affect 2.1 million PS employees, are part of a confrontational approach the President has taken toward a Federal bureaucracy he calls unaccountable and wasteful.
First issued in May last year, the Orders slash the time employees can spend on union business during office hours, make it harder to appeal against performance evaluations and curtail options for poor performers to improve.
The Executive Orders were challenged by more than a dozen unions representing Federal employees, which called them a violation of the Civil Service Law passed by Congress in 1978 setting out unions’ right to collective bargaining.
The three-judge panel unanimously held that the lower court lacked jurisdiction to review the matter, stating unions must first pursue such claims through an administrative process before seeking review by the Court of Appeals.
The 20-page ruling said the challenge should have been reviewed first by the Federal Labour Relations Authority, a small Agency governed by a three-member board of Trump appointees charged with adjudicating Federal labour disputes.
However, legal experts believe the unions would be hard-pressed to find relief at the Authority, which has sided with management in a majority of decisions it has issued under Mr Trump.
Washington, DC, 17 July 2019
