Federal employee unions are in a “battle for survival,” the Hill reports, as President Trump’s drive to clean up the Beltway bureaucracy advances. The alarm by the government labor unions comes as federal courts lift hurdles that had been imposed on the president’s push to “end collective bargaining rights at a number of agencies,” per the Hill. Mr. Trump’s progress comes amid the need for a reappraisal of unionization in the federal workforce.

The scrutiny on federal employee unions stems from an executive order that launched “a sweeping rescission of a number of existing union contracts at government agencies,” the Hill reports. Mr. Trump contends that a federal law dating to the Carter administration, the Civil Service Reform Act, “enables hostile Federal unions to obstruct agency management,” and this is “dangerous in agencies with national security responsibilities.”

Some 18 federal offices, Mr. Trump contends, engage in work relating to national security, and this enables him, per the Civil Service law, to suspend union rights in these agencies. Unions took to the courts to challenge the president’s conclusion, but the Ninth Circuit recently agreed to remove the last limit imposed by lower courts on the president’s power to proceed as planned. The federal employee unions are none too pleased.

“This ruling is certainly a setback for fundamental rights in America,” the head of the American Federation of Government Employees, Everett Kelley, says. What, though, about the rights of the taxpayers? After all, the rise of federal employee unions are best seen in the context of the growth in recent decades of an unaccountable Deep State of bureaucrats who pursue a liberal agenda regardless of who occupies the White House.

Granting federal employees the right to form unions — and deploy the tactics of collective bargaining over wages and work rules — helps the Deep State maintain its power. Yet the idea of unionized bureaucrats is a relatively recent innovation. Even an advocate of the rights of labor, like FDR, opposed the idea of permitting the unionization of the federal workforce. Feature, say, FDR’s letter in 1937 to the head of the National Federation of Federal Employees.

“Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government,” President Roosevelt warned. Government employees, he added, “should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.” This is because, unlike in the private sector, “the employer” of the federal workforce “is the whole people.” 

The people “speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress,” the president explained. Earlier, he had told the press that for government employees, “there is no collective contract.” He concluded: “There isn’t any bargaining, in other words, with the government.” Roosevelt realized that if federal employees got the power to unionize, the labor unions, just by voting, would be in a position to secure for themselves higher wages and more privileges. 

“We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss,” is how the head of America’s largest municipal employees’ union, Victor Gotbaum, later put it, after Mayor Wagner made the mistake in 1958 of permitting New York City’s government employees to unionize. That danger was ignored by President Kennedy in 1962 when he allowed, via executive order, federal employees to unionize. Democrats in Congress later codified that right into law.

Hence Mr. Trump’s challenge as he seeks to steer the ship of state by boosting efficiency in the federal bureaucracy. He’s looking, too, to scale back the power of the Deep State, especially since, as the White House puts it, the federal employee “unions have declared war on President Trump’s agenda.” The disputes could reach the Supreme Court, offering a chance for the Nine to vindicate the wisdom of FDR, and curb union influence in the public sector.