Federal employees in environmental and energy agencies are racing to lock in or extend union contracts in the waning days of President Joe Biden’s term with hopes of shielding employees from the incoming Trump administration.
Recently finalized union agreements and others still in the works would cement telework and other benefits as President-elect Donald Trump and his supporters aim to push workers back into the office five days per week and make it easier to fire government employees.
The lame-duck union contract moves have already drawn scrutiny from Trump’s team and members of Congress, and experts predict the incoming president will attempt to test their durability. Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the leaders of Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, has already publicly complained about federal employees extending their collective bargaining agreements to last beyond the incoming administration.
Unions representing workers at EPA and the Interior Department are among those who have recently approved agreements or are working with the Biden team to complete or extend their contracts.
EPA’s largest union is pressing the Biden administration to revise their existing collective bargaining agreement to last beyond the second Trump administration.
Union members at the Bureau of Land Management are scrambling to finalize their collective bargaining agreements. And unions representing staffers at the National Park Service and EPA headquarters ratified collective bargaining agreements in the wake of the November presidential election.
“We are asking Biden’s EPA to extend our contract because we anticipate a much better atmosphere for contract talks after the second Trump administration leaves office,” Nicole Cantello, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 704, which represents EPA Region 5 employees, told E&E News.
Cantello continued, “As was shown during the first go-round, Trump proved the most hostile president to federal unions since they gained the right to collectively bargain in 1962.”
EPA union’s extension bid
AFGE Council 238, which represents more than 8,000 EPA employees, is asking the agency to extend its contract to 2030. In addition, the union has asked to change another provision to require both the council and EPA to agree to reopen bargaining at the contract’s midway point in 2026.
“To reiterate, it is our belief that the EPA-AFGE contract will assist EPA workers to remain on the job throughout the next administration, preserving the EPA workforce’s hard-won knowledge and experience that will, in turn, continue to deliver excellent service to the American people,” said AFGE Council 238 President Marie Owens Powell in a letter sent Wednesday to acting EPA Deputy Administrator Jane Nishida that was obtained by E&E News.
EPA denied the union’s request to extend the contract, according to Powell’s letter. That came despite AFGE Council 238 members pressuring the agency to reverse course, which included thousands attending an emergency town hall, signing a petition and emailing Administrator Michael Regan.
“Telework is frankly the only way I can maintain my family and sanity,” said one of those emails to Regan, which was included in Powell’s letter. “If you believe in the importance of EPA’s work and the dedication of EPA staff, please protect us from the union-busting of the incoming administration and extend our contract to 2030. Now, while you can.”
EPA and AFGE Council 238 reached its latest collective bargaining agreement this summer after two years of negotiations.
The deal includes up to eight days of telework per two-week pay period, as well as first-time articles protecting diversity and scientific integrity, a vital win for the union to prevent political meddling with the agency’s scientists, which was common during the first Trump administration. But the contract lasts only until the end of June 2028, toward the tail end of Trump’s second term.
“We appreciate that AFGE is advocating for its constituents and we understand transitions between administrations can be challenging,” said EPA spokesperson Remmington Belford, adding the agency reviewed the union’s request and reached out to other agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, to see where they stood.
Belford said, “Ultimately, we decided to support the negotiation process, which occurred through our designated representatives.”
‘Extend it out as far as you can’
AFGE National President Everett Kelley said his members’ push to extend their contracts is common practice for the union.
“We are constantly saying to the locals, ‘Get your contract, get it as fast as you can, get the best contract you can, and extend it out as far as you can,’” Kelley said. “We’re constantly saying that, but we didn’t just start now.”
Other federal unions wrapped up bargaining after the election on new contracts that have been years in the making, including those affiliated with the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents staffers in 36 agencies, such as EPA and the National Park Service.
NTEU Chapter 296 and NTEU Chapter 336 members voted to ratify their new collective bargaining agreement with the Park Service earlier this month, according to the union chapter’s website. The contract should go into effect in 30 days.
The union shared on its website highlights of that deal, such as increased child care subsidies, anti-bullying safeguards and “no blanket requirement” for teleworking staff to report to the office more than twice a pay period. The contract also lasts five years.
NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said in a statement that the union’s collective bargaining agreements usually have terms of four, five or six years.
“We are consistently at term tables with multiple agencies at any given time and negotiations that are being completed now started well before the presidential election,” Greenwald said.
She added, “NTEU has a proud history of sitting down with agency management, under any presidential administration, to bargain in good faith agreements that benefit agencies and their employees.”
NTEU Chapter 280, which represents EPA headquarters employees, thanked members in a Dec. 4 blog post for voting the week before to approve “the tentative agreement” with the agency. That post has since been removed from the union’s website.
That deal has now been submitted to EPA for “agency head review” where the head of the agency evaluates the contract to ensure it’s within the law. The process takes 30 days and agencies usually sign off on the agreements.
Negotiations between NTEU and EPA have been ongoing since its previous contract expired in the fall of 2019, according to the agency.
“NTEU’s agreement has a similar duration provision as AFGE’s — both have limited article reopener provisions in 2026 and will expire in 2028,” said Belford, the EPA spokesperson. “Under all EPA’s union agreements, teleworking employees are required to be regularly scheduled to report to agency worksites for a minimum of two days per pay period.”
Other unions completed contracts before the election.
AFGE Local 421, which represents more than 1,000 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission employees, finished negotiations on their latest collective bargaining agreement earlier this year.
Their contract’s effective date is Aug. 19 and it lasts six years, well into 2030. Among its provisions, supervisors can approve FERC employees teleworking up to eight days during a two-week pay period.
BLM workers in talks with Biden team
The NTEU chapter representing about 200 nonsupervisory staffers at the BLM’s national headquarters in Washington has been at the bargaining table for more than two years negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with the agency. The president of the headquarters union Chapter 341 declined to comment on the status of those negotiations, though finalizing a deal is particularly important for HQ employees as the incoming Trump administration is expected to at least consider moving BLM’s national headquarters office out of Washington for the second time in four years.
A BLM spokesperson declined to comment on the ongoing negotiations.
Also uncertain is the status of a separate collective bargaining agreement NTEU is negotiating with BLM New Mexico on behalf of about 200 employees in the New Mexico state office, as well as the Taos and Rio Puerco field offices. Representatives of the New Mexico union Chapter 340 could not be reached for comment.
BLM employees in the Northwest Oregon District, which had unionized in the 1980s as a chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees, last year voted to move to the NTEU as a new chapter, and are also negotiating a separate revised collective bargaining agreement on behalf of about 220 employees. A representative with the Oregon union chapter said negotiations are progressing.
Targets for DOGE and the GOP
Trump’s government-downsizing team led by Ramaswamy and Elon Musk — known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — is already fuming over some federal employees’ moves to ink telework deals before the Biden administration leaves office.
After a Bloomberg report in early December that Social Security Administration workers had locked in an agreement to protect telework until 2029, Ramaswamy called the move a “brazen attempt to tie the hands of future presidents & thwart the will of the American people who voted decisively for structural change,” in a post on the social media site X. And he vowed that all “midnight-hour maneuvers by the Biden administration will be scrutinized.”
Congressional Republicans have warned agencies against finalizing or extending union agreements in the waning days of the Biden administration.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) sent letters to agencies earlier this month saying they were “investigating whether agency leaders are abusing federal labor laws by granting authority over agency operations and policy to unions, chiefly to bind the hands of a future President.”
They urged the Biden administration “to cease negotiating or extending collective bargaining agreements with respect to a workforce it will have no responsibility to manage going forward.”
Trump could test boundaries
Although union contracts are legally binding agreements, experts say the Trump administration could challenge them, potentially leading to protracted legal battles that cause uncertainty for the workers they cover.
The scramble to finalize union contracts now comes in part from workers’ sense that “we have to do anything possible to try to protect the federal workforce, because the Trump administration is going to go after people viciously,” said John Logan, professor and director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University.
The Trump administration may try to test the boundaries when it comes to firing workers or demanding that workers spend more time in the office, Logan said. Even if courts ultimately reject Trump’s moves, if employees quit their jobs or have been fired as a result, “the damage will have been done.”
William Resh, an associate professor of public policy and management at the University of Southern California, said he expects the incoming Trump administration “will not interpret existing collective bargaining agreements in good faith to their intent under Biden.”
After many “federal unions secured extended bargaining agreements through 2028 under Biden, which significantly strengthened worker protections, Trump will likely interpret those agreements as restrictively as possible and require unions to engage in extensive litigation to enforce them,” Resh said.
Meanwhile, unions are preparing to defend their deals. Kelley of AFGE said a collective bargaining agreement entered into by the federal government is enforceable under the law.
“We trust the incoming administration will abide by those obligations to honor the lawful union contracts,” Kelley said. “We’re prepared to assert our rights if the contracts are violated in any way.”
