President Donald Trump said late Friday that he plans to nullify federal employee union contracts that agencies agreed to late in former President Joe Biden’s term.
In a memo to agency heads, Trump said that Biden officials had negotiated new collective bargaining agreements meant “to harm my Administration,” in part by undermining his return-to-office mandate, and that he intended to scrap them and bargain his own.
He referred specifically to a contract ratified with the Education Department days before he took office.
“Such last-minute, lame-duck CBAs, which purport to bind a new President to his predecessor’s policies, run counter to America’s system of democratic self-government,” he claimed.
The memo did not make clear his legal justification for nullifying existing union contracts. He referred to a 2010 Supreme Court decision that stated that a president “cannot choose to bind his successors by diminishing their powers.”
“Such last-minute, lame-duck CBAs, which purport to bind a new President to his predecessor’s policies, run counter to America’s system of democratic self-government,” he claimed.
The memo did not make clear his legal justification for nullifying existing union contracts. He referred to a 2010 Supreme Court decision that stated that a president “cannot choose to bind his successors by diminishing their powers.”