A group of federal employee unions filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the Trump administration’s efforts to strip union representation from about one million federal workers, arguing that President Trump had exceeded his constitutional authority and violated the unions’ rights.
The complaint, filed late Thursday night in federal court in Oakland, Calif., is the latest development in the unions’ escalating battle with the administration over its attempts to slash the federal work force and roll back the protections afforded to the civil service employees. Unions representing government workers have repeatedly sued over the efforts to cut jobs and dismantle offices and agencies, winning at least temporary reprieves in some of those cases.
Last week, Mr. Trump signed an executive order designating employees of about two dozen agencies as central to “national security missions,” a move explicitly designed to exclude them from federal unions, which the administration said were “hostile” to his agenda.
The executive order was accompanied by a lawsuit in federal court in Texas, filed by the administration, which seeks to allow agencies to cancel collective bargaining agreements, which would strip the employees of union protection and the unions of millions of dollars in dues.
Officials at the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union, which filed the countersuit on Friday, said the president’s move was among the most aggressive they had seen out of the White House so far, one that threatened collective bargaining rights across the work force. The A.F.G.E. alone represents 800,000 workers.
The lawsuit called the order an act of retaliation against the union for pushing back against “both his agenda to decimate the federal work force and his broader agenda to fundamentally restructure the federal government through expansive and unprecedented exercises of executive authority.”
Since January, unions have filed an array of lawsuits challenging an array of executive orders and actions, including the February firing of some 25,000 probational employees.
The administration said the move to eliminate union representation was necessary to protect national security and advance Mr. Trump’s agenda.
