The sixth episode of AFGE’s new series, The Activist, highlighting our union members who have stepped up to help make a difference in the lives of their colleagues and our government.
Joyce Howell is senior attorney at EPA Region 3 in Philadelphia and executive vice president of AFGE Council 238 representing EPA employees across the country.
Joyce has been working for the EPA in Philadelphia for 30 years. As an attorney, her job is important to her local community and the American public as she prosecutes and enforces environmental laws to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we live on.
She has been an AFGE member for about 10 years since our union started organizing lawyers in Region 3. She believes that workers’ voice is stronger when everyone joins together.
“When we stand in solidarity, we represent the workers, and, in our case, I think we also represent our mission and help it survive political throughflow and keep our eyes on the mission and defend the workers,” she said.
Joyce is the chief negotiator of the council’s contract negotiation team, which has been in negotiation with the agency but has also hit a partial impasse over the council’s proposed diversity article to make the EPA a more inclusive agency as it plans to hire 1,800 employees in the next year.
Joyce is passionate about defending her colleagues and her agency’s mission. But there’s another thing she’s trying to defend through AFGE as well. Listen to her talk about what she’s defending and why she got involved in the union in the first place.
Since taking office in January 2025, President Trump has issued a series of unlawful executive orders, and taken several unlawful actions, seeking to shut down congressionally mandated agencies, fire and displace federal workers, outlaw their unions, and gut merit systems protections.
Read More
A federal judge has ordered the Department of Veterans Affairs to reinstate the union contract covering 320,000 VA employees represented by AFGE in a major victory over the implementation of President Trump’s union-busting executive orders.
Read More
As the Department of Homeland Security shutdown reaches the one-month mark with no end in sight, AFGE leaders are calling on Congress to ensure all DHS workers are paid.
Read More
