Another Union Sues to Block Trump Workforce Orders
A union representing Veterans Affairs employees in Buffalo, N.Y., filed a federal lawsuit this week challenging three executive orders that have been at the center of another legal challenge for more than a year. The new lawsuit comes just weeks before an existing injunction against key provisions of the orders could be lifted.
Local 200United of the Service Employees International Union is suing President Trump and acting Office of Personnel Management Director Margaret Weichert in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, alleging that three workforce orders signed in May 2018 exceeded the president’s constitutional authority and violated the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act.
The executive orders in question seek to shorten the length of performance improvement plans to 30 days, exempt adverse personnel actions from grievance proceedings, streamline collective bargaining negotiations, and significantly reduce the number of work hours union members can spend on official time.
They have been the subject of a protracted legal battle between more than a dozen federal employee unions and the Trump administration. Although a federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued an injunction blocking the implementation of key provisions of the orders in August 2018, a three-judge panel at the D.C. Circuit Court overturned that decision last month on jurisdictional grounds. The injunction will remain in place until unions have an opportunity to appeal or ask for a rehearing by all 11 judges of the D.C. Circuit.
In the new lawsuit, SEIU argued that Congress, when it passed the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, only provided two narrow avenues by which a president can issue executive orders related to labor-management relations, and that the orders in question fall squarely outside of those boundaries.
https://www.govexec.com/management/2019/08/another-union-sues-block-trump-workforce-orders/159249/
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