The Trump Administration’s Impact on Workers’ Collective Bargaining Rights

Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency promising to fight for American workers and their jobs, but in practice, his administration’s actions and policies have consistently and dramatically undermined workers and their rights. The Trump Administration has attacked the federal workforce and their unions through massive reductions in personnel, mass terminations of probationary employees, attempts to shut down entire agencies, cancellation of a million workers’ collective bargaining rights, and the removal of federal workers’ civil service job protections. In the private sector, Trump disabled the primary agency responsible for enforcing workers’ collective bargaining rights for almost a year by taking the unprecedented action of firing one of the agency’s Senate-confirmed appointees, and his Administration has continued to undermine the independence and impartiality of the National Labor Relations Board and other independent adjudicatory agencies that hear and decide cases involving alleged employer violations of worker and consumer protection laws. 

Quite unexpectedly, given these attacks, U.S. union membership actually increased in 2025, including in the federal sector, according to the most recent statistics from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). It is not possible to tell from the BLS statistics how much of the increase is due to new organizing as opposed to increased employment at firms or government entities whose workers already had union representation. The statistics for calendar year 2025 also do not reflect the full extent and impact of the Trump attacks on workers’ collective bargaining rights, and the membership increases likely are in large measure due to the positive impact of former President Joe Biden’s pro-union policies and workers’ continued interest in winning union representation.

The U.S. labor movement is fighting back. Dozens of lawsuits against the Trump Administration have been filed by unions and their allies, and a number of these lawsuits have been successful in at least temporarily stopping Trump’s actions. However, the Trump Administration has succeeded in creating chaos and demoralizing the federal workforce, resulting in mass resignations of more than 300,000 federal workers in less than a year. Litigation is slow, and the Administration’s record of compliance with federal court orders reining in its actions is uneven.

In addition to lawsuits, the labor movement has mobilized to win passage in the U.S. House of Representatives of the Protect America’s Workforce Act – bipartisan legislation restoring and protecting federal workers’ collective bargaining rights. The legislation is now pending in the U.S. Senate. 

The labor movement has been a major organizer and participant in rallies, press conferences, demonstrations, and other actions protesting the Trump Administration’s agenda. The labor movement endorsed and participated in the “No Work, No School, No Shopping” actions in Minneapolis following the ICE murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and local labor movements are organizing a range of actions across the country for May Day 2026. The labor movement is also very focused on supporting pro-worker candidates in the 2026 elections, hoping to restore a pro-worker majority to at least one, and ideally both, houses of Congress.

The Trump Administration’s Impact on Workers’ Collective Bargaining Rights