Washington (AP) – On Wednesday, a federal judge agreed to temporarily prevent the Trump administration from removing foreign service employees of their collective bargaining rights.
The US district judge Paul Friedman made the request of an injunction from a federal union that the Republican administration, while its lawsuit against the government is pending, was the implementation of a key share of an executive prescription signed by President Donald Trump.
The American Foreign Service Association, which represents more than 18,000 members of the Federal Foreign Service, sued the administration on the order on March 27.
The union said Trump’s command “improved decades of stable work management relationships in the foreign service” and eliminated all members of the Foreign Ministry and the US agency for international development from reporting on a law that gives them the right to organize and negotiate together.
In his opinion, Friedman said: “The congress could not have been clearer that the law was passed that it had intended to protect the law to expand the insured departments and agencies in the foreign service.”
The government’s lawyers said that Trump had found that “agencies with a primary national security focus through restrictive conditions of collective agreements that are thwarted their ability to protect, thwart the interests of the American people”.
“The determination of the democratically elected president with regard to public interest in this sphere is entitled to respect,” they wrote.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers claim that Trump had issued the order of the executive to take revenge against unions and not to achieve national security goals.
“Employees of the foreign service have lost the ability to negotiate together at a time at a time when it is most important, since the administration continues to make significant, persistent changes to the working conditions and employment of employees,” wrote the lawyers of the unions.
Last month, the same judge temporarily blocked the administration in a separate case to terminate collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of federal employees. Friedman decided that an integral part of Trump’s executive order with around three dozen agencies and departments in which employees are represented by the National Treasury Employees Union cannot be enforced. The government made an appeal against his decision.
Democratic President Bill Clinton nominated Friedman to the bank in 1994.
