AFGE filed an unfair labor practice charge against the National Park Service (NPS) for declaring they would impose anti-worker management directives on NPS employees nationwide. Several of the directives mirror those contained in three executive orders issued by the Trump administration that were largely ruled illegal by a federal judge.

Continuing a pattern of trampling on federal employees’ rights and ignoring the law to dismantle decades of prior agreements between our union and previous administrations, the Trump administration and NPS management refused to negotiate in good faith with the union and took steps to prevent our union from participating in the negotiations.

NPS management, for example, interfered and restricted our union’s right to designate our own representatives. Management refused to grant official time hours to officials who are part of our union’s bargaining team to meet and prepare for negotiations. Management unilaterally drafted directives and declared it intended to implement them on June 27, 2019.

Here are the most egregious provisions that are direct attacks on employees’ rights to union representation and workplace protections:

• Automatic termination of union dues. NPS wants to make it harder for employees to join a union by requiring them to reauthorize union dues every year or their union membership will be automatically terminated.
• Removing employees’ protections. NPS wants to gut employees’ rights to workplace protections by drastically cutting the number of union reps and hours they can use, known as ‘official time’, to protect employees against unfair treatment by managers. Specifically, union reps are prohibited from using official time to defend employees in Equal Employment Opportunity workplace discrimination cases. Union reps must also obtain permission before entering a work area to meet with an employee.

“The efforts by management at NPS to obliterate workers’ rights on the job mirror what the Trump administration has been doing at other agencies,” said AFGE President J. David Cox Sr. “We are going to do everything we can to fight this injustice and defend NPS employees from these immoral attacks on their rights and jobs.”