Union agreements terminated by VA department
President Trump's executive order issued in March 2025 has effectively terminated collective bargaining rights for most federal workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), impacting approximately 370,000 workers. The VA announced on August 6, 2025, that it has ended union contracts for most bargaining-unit employees in response to this order.
The executive order uses a rarely invoked federal statute (5 U.S.C. § 7103(b)(1)) that permits excluding federal agencies from labor law coverage if national security is at stake. The VA, however, has excluded certain occupations, such as VA police officers and firefighters, whose union contracts remain intact.
Legal challenges are ongoing. Courts have so far allowed the order to remain in effect during litigation. The federal appellate court in California lifted a lower court's preliminary injunction that had blocked several federal agencies from canceling certain union contracts. Unions like the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) argue that the order is a pretext to undermine unions and violates First Amendment rights.
The administration intends to extend this exclusion from collective bargaining to about one million federal employees across multiple agencies beyond VA and EPA, representing a significant setback for federal unions. Unions and labor coalitions are actively fighting to restore these rights legislatively and through the courts.
The move has been met with outrage by at least two of the top unions representing VA employees, with AFGE stating that it is assessing its options to challenge the move. The National Nurses United (NNU), the largest union of registered nurses in the country, considers the VA's decision to terminate its contract and those of other unions as an attack on its members.
NNU states that the VA's move is an attempt to silence nurses and other VA workers to expedite the destruction of the VA. The VA, on the other hand, claims that labor contracts have restricted managers' ability to hire, promote, and reward high performing employees and to hold poor performers accountable.
The VA notified five major unions that their contracts for "bargaining-unit employees" were being terminated: the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Association of Government Employees, the National Federation of Federal Employees, the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United, and the Service Employees International Union. Contracts covering the roughly 4,000 VA police officers, firefighters, or security guards represented by those unions will remain in place.
AFGE National President Everett Kelley stated that the decision is "inconsistent" with Office of Personnel Management guidance instructing agencies to hold off on ending union agreements while the legal challenges played out. The VA, however, maintains that the move will allow staff to "spend more time with Veterans," as in 2024, nearly 2,000 union employees spent more than 750,000 hours of work on taxpayer-funded union time.
The overall impact is a major reduction of collective bargaining rights affecting about one million federal workers nationwide. This represents one of the largest federal actions against union rights in recent decades, profoundly affecting unions representing VA employees and other federal workers. NNU plans to continue pursuing legal action with other unions.
The administration's decision to exclude federal agencies from labor law coverage, as stated in President Trump's executive order, has sparked legal challenges and intense debate in the realm of policy-and-legislation, particularly in the context of general-news. Unions, such as NTEU and NNU, argue that this move is a pretext to undermine unions and infringe upon First Amendment rights, while the VA contends that labor contracts have been restricting managerial decisions and affecting the efficiency of their operations.
