UNITED STATES
Key parts of United States President Donald Trump’s executive orders that would make it easier to fire Federal public sector employees have been invalidated by a judge in Washington.
The ruling, seen as a victory for public sector unions, follows the Mr Trump’s signing of three executive orders in May that aimed to give Agencies more power in terminating employees deemed to be poor performers.
The orders also encouraged Department heads to renegotiate contracts with unions that represent Government employees as well as narrowing the definition of “official time” that Federal workers in union positions can spend on union business when they’re at work.
The Trump Administration viewed the orders as a way of saving taxpayers millions of dollars and slimming down the Government bureaucracy.
However, US District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (pictured) ruled that the orders exceeded Mr Trump’s authority.
Judge Jackson wrote in her decision that the President can issue executive orders over labour-management relations, but not if executive actions conflict with collective bargaining rights guaranteed under Federal law.
“Because many of the executive order provisions that the unions challenge here have that effect, this Court concludes that the President has overstepped his bounds,” Judge Jackson wrote in her 119-page decision.
Labour leaders celebrated the ruling as an affirmation of the judiciary’s ability to check executive action that goes too far.
National President of the American Federation of Government Employees, David Cox said President Trump’s illegal action was a direct assault on the legal rights and protections that Congress specifically guaranteed to public sector employees.
Deputy General Counsel at the National Association of Government Employees, Sarah Suszczyk said Mr Trump’s executive orders were an “anti-labour, anti-middle class effort” seeking to curtail the influence of employees in the workplace.
“If the Administration seeks to have changes in regard to the Federal workforce, legislation is the way to do it, not through unlawful executive orders,” Ms Suszczyk said.
Washington, 27 August, 2018
