AFGE and the National Treasury Employees Union recently joined forces to protect our members’ rights to engage in union activity on their own time after the Food and Drug Administration threatened to discipline workers.
In late August, FDA issued a directive threatening to discipline employees for union activity, even on their own time. This order reached into public servants’ personal lives and singled out union speech for harsher treatment than any other personal activity.
With the assistance of Democracy Forward, AFGE and the NTEU pushed back together, demanding that FDA respect its employees’ First Amendment rights to free speech and association. Public servants do not give up their constitutional rights when they become federal employees.
In response to our objections, FDA has clarified that employees remain free to support their union on their own time, and that union activity is subject to the same rules on agency devices as any other personal use. This was the result of hardworking FDA employees and their unions standing up for their rights.
“FDA employees represented by AFGE Local 3381, regardless of whether employees choose to be union members, have the unassailable First Amendment right to express views or to conduct union activities in their personal capacity on non-duty time,” said AFGE Local 3381 President Brian Garthwaite, whose local represents FDA employees in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
“FDA’s threat to discipline or to remove from federal service any employee exercising their First Amendment right as a private citizen is intolerable, and AFGE Local 3381 will assertively defend that right.”
AFGE National President Everett Kelley said the attacks on workers’ rights at the FDA are symptomatic of the broader attacks being waged by the Trump administration on the employees we represent across the federal and D.C. governments.
“Under this administration’s orders, agencies have been testing how far they can go in silencing public-sector employees who stand up for their rights at work. AFGE will continue to fight to hold agencies accountable to the Constitution, and we will not hesitate to act when federal employees’ freedoms are under attack,” Kelley said.
Written by OPEIU 2 AFL-CIO
It’s all come down to this. On Tuesday, Nov. 3, millions of Americans will head to the polls to vote in midterm elections that are largely seen as a referendum on President Trump’s past two years in office.
Read More
AFGE representatives from the Social Security Administration joined members of Congress last week in urging the agency to provide residents in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands with full access to SSA’s toll-free help line.
Read More
AFGE and the National Treasury Employees Union recently joined forces to protect our members’ rights to engage in union activity on their own time after the Food and Drug Administration threatened to discipline workers.
Read More
