A newly proposed rule by the Trump administration seeks to improve accountability in the federal workforce, including eliminating some of the ways unions make it harder to remove federal employees for poor performance or misconduct and preventing unions from defending those employees in disciplinary proceedings at taxpayer expense.
In doing so, the proposal advances a key reform for which the Freedom Foundation has long advocated and is one of many actions taken by President Trump in both his first and second terms to make the federal bureaucracy more responsive to the American people.
The Freedom Foundation has historically supported such efforts and, last week, filed formal comments backing the latest regulations proposed by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
In addition to streamlining the procedures for federal agencies to take disciplinary and adverse employment actions, OPM’s proposed rule would prohibit “taxpayer-funded union time” for federal employees serving as union representatives during such proceedings.
As the name implies, taxpayer-funded union time refers to the practice of federal employees engaging in union activities instead of their assigned duties while on the clock and without loss of pay.
The Freedom Foundation has long fought to curtail this practice and, in 2023, investigated and exposed the Biden administration’s efforts to conceal information about taxpayer-funded union time before successfully working with congressional lawmakers and the Trump administration to reimplement a requirement that federal agencies report the amount of union work performed by their employees at taxpayer expense.
According to OPM, that information now serves as the basis for its current proposal.
Though the ban on taxpayer-funded union time would only apply to certain disciplinary and adverse action proceedings, OPM’s proposal represents significant progress toward limiting taxpayer support for unions and further validates the Freedom Foundation’s advocacy for these reforms at both the state and federal level.
In its comments, the Freedom Foundation also highlighted numerous examples of how federal employee union contracts make it harder to hold employees accountable for poor performance or misconduct.
Having recognized this already, OPM explains that another key objective of the proposed rule would be to prevent unions from “providing for or otherwise authorizing any requirements, process, standards or allowances not contemplated, in whole or in part, by this rule. Thus, these procedures are proposed to supersede any conflicting provisions found in agency policies or collective bargaining agreements.”
If adopted, the changes would go a long way toward limiting unions’ control over — and ability to impede — federal employee accountability procedures. According to the Freedom Foundation’s review of federal employee collective bargaining agreements, unions commonly bargain for provisions that can add months of delays to agencies’ disciplinary and removal proceedings and, among other things, require federal agencies to scrub records of poor performance or misconduct from employees’ personnel files.
The Trump administration should be commended for its efforts to restore accountability to the federal workforce, including by removing union roadblocks to the HR process and ensuring that taxpayer dollars are not used by unions to defend underperforming or malfeasant employees.
Having previously worked with the administration to bring taxpayer-funded union time into the light, the Freedom Foundation is particularly pleased to see OPM take the next step towards limiting this practice in the federal government and, along with its supportive comments, offered a few suggestions on ways to strengthen this aspect of the proposed rule.
Much like their goals for the federal workforce, Trump administration officials should now move quickly and efficiently to finalize these reforms.
