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AFSCME President Lee Saunders called a federal court ruling over the weekend affirming that federal probationary employees were wrongfully fired earlier this year a “significant victory” in our fight to protect our communities.
“This is yet another significant victory in our continued fight against the Trump administration's attacks on our jobs and livelihoods, providing relief to AFSCME members who have been targeted and to our communities that rely on strong, dependable public services,” Saunders said in a press statement. “The billionaires running this administration have waged an unrelenting assault on working people, illegally trying to eliminate our jobs while using their yes-men in Congress to strip away our health care and essential services nationwide.”
The ruling, issued late Friday, states that the Trump administration acted unlawfully when its Office of Personnel Management directed agencies across the federal government to fire their probationary employees. Judge William Alsup, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was strongly critical of the Trump administration, calling its evidence in the case a “sham.”
The judge did not order the government to rehire the terminated probationary employees at this stage in the case, though a preliminary injunction earlier in the case had that effect before it was later paused by the Supreme Court. But he did order each of the 17 agencies that participated in the firings, including the FAA and USDA, to issue corrective notices to the impacted workers stating, “You were not terminated on the basis of your personal performance.”
AFSCME was among a group of unions — including the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) — that sued the Trump administration in February to stop the mass firings of federal probationary employees. The unions called the terminations “one of the most massive employment frauds in the history of this country.”
Thanks to our efforts in this case, thousands of wrongfully terminated federal workers — including AFSCME members at the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Agriculture — were previously ordered reinstated to their jobs, and now they have had their personnel files corrected as well.
Saunders also said AFSCME’s 1.4 million members continue to fight back.
“As the administration continues to dangerously cut federal workers and attack their freedom to collectively bargain, we will continue to use every resource at our disposal to fight this anti-worker agenda,” he said.
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