As Trump moves to end union representation for federal workers, thousands in Pa. and N.J. could be affected

President Donald Trump moved Thursday to end collective bargaining with federal labor unions in agencies with national security missions across the federal government.

The executive order, signed late Thursday, affects agencies including the Departments of State, Defense, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Health and Human Services, Treasury, Justice, and Commerce, and the part of Homeland Security responsible for border security.

It’s just the latest move from the Trump administration to strip federal workers of their union contracts. The Department of Homeland Security announced it was ending TSA union representation and collective bargaining rights in early March. The move left Philadelphia TSA employees concerned about how it could change their workplace environment.

Here’s a look at what changes have been announced and how they could impact the Philadelphia area.

Pennsylvania has roughly 66,100 federal workers across various agencies, and Veterans Affairs employs the largest share of them. Among the departments that are impacted by the executive order, Pennsylvania has the following employees:

About 71% of Pennsylvania’s federal employees are in union jobs — nearly 47,000, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management as of March 2024. That’s about 66% in New Jersey and in Delaware about 62%.

There were about 22,500 federal employees in New Jersey and about 4,000 in Delaware as of March 2024, according to OPM data.

Employees of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Benefits Administration and others work for departments impacted by the executive order.

Some of the government employees affected by Thursday’s executive order work at the U.S. Mint near Independence Mall, the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center in West Philadelphia, and the IRS’s 30th and Market Street location.

Trump said the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 gives him the authority to end collective bargaining with federal unions in these agencies because of their role in safeguarding national security.

A memo from the Office of Personnel Management on Thursday provides guidance to agencies on the change. The memo notes that collective bargaining agreements “often create procedural impediments to separating poor performers beyond those required by statute or regulation.”

National president Everett Kelley said AFGE, which is the largest union for federal employees, is “preparing immediate legal action” in response to Trump’s executive order and what Kelley referred to as “unprecedented attacks.”

“President Trump’s latest executive order is a disgraceful and retaliatory attack on the rights of hundreds of thousands of patriotic American civil servants — nearly one-third of whom are veterans — simply because they are members of a union that stands up to his harmful policies,” Kelley said in a statement Thursday night.

The National Treasury Employees Union president, Doreen Greenwald, said: “We will vigorously challenge this illegal order in court.”

Her union represents federal employees across 37 departments and offices including the Department of Health and Human Services, which announced cuts to its workforce on Thursday, and the Department of the Treasury.

“The executive order to eliminate collective bargaining rights for federal employees across the government is a brazen attempt by the administration to ensure its reckless assault on vital federal agency services can continue unimpeded,” Greenwald said in a statement.

Alex Jay Berman, executive vice president of National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 71, which represents IRS workers at the 30th and Market Street location, works full-time for the union. He described that role as aiming to “improve the workplace,” he said, “so that the work which is done for the American people is done better, more efficiently, more correctly and more clearly.”

He wondered Friday morning how the order would be implemented, not having yet heard details from the IRS or Treasury.

“When I go in to work today, am I going to my office? Am I going on phones to do work [for the IRS] that I haven’t done in 20 years? Am I getting trained?” he said. “Will I return to a locked office?”

Members, too, “are all asking questions we can’t answer,” Berman added. The executive order left him feeling “horribly betrayed.”

The Associated Press contributed to this article.