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Trump signed EO 14343 stripping collective bargaining from NASA, National Weather Service and Patent Office workers

President Trump signed Executive Order 14343 on August 28, 2025, extending his earlier March 2025 order to remove collective bargaining rights from employees at NASA, the National Weather Service, the Patent and Trademark Office, and several other agencies under a "national security" rationale. The order targeted agencies with no primary national security mission, and union leaders said it was explicit retaliation against organizations — including IFPTE and NWSEO — that had filed lawsuits challenging Trump's March executive order.

Jurisdiction
federal
Location
Washington, D.C.

Abuses documented

Actors

On August 28, 2025 — the same day he issued a Labor Day proclamation — President Trump signed Executive Order 14343, "Further Exclusions from the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program," extending his March 2025 order (EO 14251) to strip collective bargaining rights from workers at NASA, the National Weather Service and the National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service within NOAA, the International Trade Administration and the Patent and Trademark Office within the Commerce Department, and the U.S. Agency for Global Media. The administration invoked a seldom-used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act allowing the president to exclude agencies from collective bargaining when their work "cannot be applied... consistent with national security requirements."

The Civil Service Reform Act's national security exclusion was designed for agencies with genuine intelligence or military functions, not civilian scientific and administrative bodies. Courts had already moved to block EO 14251, with judges finding the national security rationale for stripping bargaining rights from agencies such as the Voice of America and the Social Security Administration pretextual. The administration was simultaneously terminating existing collective bargaining agreements at more than half a dozen agencies, despite assurances to federal judges that it would not do so while litigation was pending.

Union leaders characterized EO 14343 as explicit retaliation. The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents NASA workers, and the National Weather Service Employees Organization had both filed lawsuits challenging the March order. By signing EO 14343 to cover those agencies specifically, the administration escalated the pressure on litigating unions. An AFGE official said the order amounted to punishing workers whose unions sought judicial protection of their statutory rights.

Why we recorded this

The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act granted federal employees collective bargaining rights as a statutory protection from Congress. EO 14343 used a narrow national security exception in that law to strip those rights from workers at agencies with no meaningful national security mission — NASA scientists, weather forecasters, patent examiners — while simultaneously targeting unions that had filed lawsuits challenging an earlier, similar order. EO 14343 circumvented a congressionally-enacted labor protection under a pretextual rationale and retaliated against workers whose unions sought judicial relief.

Sources

  1. Further Exclusions From the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program (EO 14343) — Federal Register primary accessed June 23, 2026
  2. A fresh executive order aims to ban unions at more federal agencies — Government Executive secondary accessed June 23, 2026

See also