WASHINGTON, D.C. - The White House said Friday that President Donald Trump has signed three executive orders intended to crack down on unions that represent federal employees and to make it easier to fire federal workers.
"Today, the President is fulfilling his promise to promote more efficient government by reforming our civil service rules," Trump domestic policy director Andrew Bremberg told reporters, saying the executive orders will "make it easier for agencies to remove poor-performing employees and ensure that taxpayer dollars are more efficiently used."
Among other things, the orders would curtail the amount of on-duty time federal workers can spend on union business, reduce the amount of time workers can spend on probation before they're fired, and order federal agencies to negotiate tougher contracts with unions, White House officials said. They estimated the changes would save the federal government $100 million a year.
The head of the American Federation of Government Employees union responded to Trump's actions by threatening a lawsuit, and claiming Trump was taking revenge on apolitical civil service workers because he believes most civil servants supported his opponent during the last presidential election.
AFGE National President J. David Cox, Sr. said the changes would hurt the American public and make it easier to shield bad managers and political employees from whistle blowing union members who might expose waste, fraud and abuse.
"This is basically an attempt to make federal employees 'at will' employees so you can hire whoever voted for you and put on your bumper sticker during the last election," Cox told reporters after the executive orders were announced on a Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend.
His union represents roughly 700,000 of the nation's 2.1 million federal workers, including several thousand at Cleveland's Defense Finance and Accounting Service office.
The head of conservative Americans For Limited Government said the executive orders would help end taxpayer subsidies of unions that represent federal employees.
"There is nothing more galling to limited government advocates than public employee unions being largely subsidized by taxpayer dollars while using their dues payments to support politicians in favor of expanding government," said a statement from the group's president, Rick Manning, who was part of Trump's Labor transition team.