Can your employer cancel your union’s right to bargain by issuing a press release? On March 7 the Department of Homeland Security announced plans “ending collective bargaining” for TSA’s transportation screening officers by issuing a press release.

Organizing and action by government workers to oppose the Trump-Musk assault on public services is burgeoning. Here are some examples…

America’s two largest unions, the National Education Association and the Service Employees International Union, are among dozens of sponsors of a nationwide mobilization April 5 “to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history.”

Washington trade unions, including UFCW and AFT, have begun organizing a campaign for the state to divest its pension and other funds from fossil fuels. As Jeff Johnson, a former President of the Washington State Labor Council and a longtime member of the LNS board recently wrote…

LNS Board member Edgar Franks is the political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, a farmworkers’ union in Skagit County, WA. He was recently interviewed on a Northwest Public Broadcasting feature on “Immigrant enforcement concerns farmers and farmworkers in Washington.”

A jury in North Dakota jury recently ordered the environmental nonprofit Greenpeace to pay pipeline corporation Energy Transfer more than $660 million dollars for defamation and other claims connected to protests at the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016-17.

The just-released report of the World Meteorological Association on the state of the global climate in 2024 found that last year was the hottest on record and that for the first time in history the 10 hottest years on record all occurred in the last decade…

A group of current and former employees of the US Environmental Protection Agency recently issued this warning…

Nearly $700 billion in funding for infrastructure- and climate-related projects were passed under the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law.

Richard (Rich) Kowalczyk was voted to be the first president of AFSCME Local 3599 when it was started in 2018 and continues to serve in that capacity.  Rich had also been active as an executive board member at the chapter level for many years prior to Local 3599 being started.  

On February 14, more than 360 government employees and their supporters joined an on-line meeting organized by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Council 238, which represents workers in the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Labor Network for Sustainability.

Government workers are on the move to fight the MAGA assault on public services and public workers. They need and deserve the support of the entire labor movement and of the public they serve.

As a public servant, I am a member of AFSCME Local 3599, the Upstate Environmental Protection Technical and Professional Employees, part of District Council 37 of New York City. Our local’s highly technical and professional members ensure approximately ten million people receive high quality drinking water.

Not only are government unions protectors of the environment, they have also been strong advocates for climate-friendly policies.

In 2019, government workers and their supporters forced an end to President Trump’s shutdown of the government and used the threat of a general strike to keep the government open.