Federal Worker Militancy–Can It Return?

Many of you have some familiarity with Joseph McCartin’s superb book on the PATCO strike, which in 1981 led to Reagan firing the air traffic controllers. One of the points of that book though is contributing to a literature around the militancy of public sector workers in the decade leading up to that disaster, really starting with the 1970 postal workers strike that was also illegal and where the Nixon administration completely caved. So it makes sense that he would muse on the possibility of federal worker militancy returning in the face of Trump and Musk coming for their livelihoods and for the sheer capability of governance.

Here’s the last few paragraphs to whet your appetite:

Unrest among federal workers peaked in March 1970—after the executive orders were promulgated. In that month, hundreds of thousands of postal workers defied the federal ban on striking and staged an eight-day wildcat walkout, frustrated by their inability to negotiate over pay under the government’s limited form of collective bargaining. When Nixon called out the National Guard to deliver the mail, postal workers held firm and only returned to work after they were promised a wage increase. Just as they returned to work, several thousand air traffic controllers staged a seventeen-day sickout to protest the Federal Aviation Administration’s refusal to negotiate with their union. Both job actions produced results. The walkout made it possible for postal workers to win the creation of the U.S. Postal Service, a semi-autonomous federal agency that was allowed to bargain with them over their pay. For their part, air traffic controllers were able to speed up the official recognition of PATCO as their exclusive bargaining agent. It was only after PATCO’s ill-fated 1981 strike that job actions by federal workers became exceedingly rare.

Trump’s radical executive order could reawaken this long-dormant tradition of collective action among otherwise seemingly docile federal workers. Such actions, should they arise, will likely not take the form of a strike. There is a long history of slowdowns, sickouts, and work-to-rule actions by federal workers. Such actions are often difficult for the government to detect, let alone defuse. And they do not require official union sanction. Indeed, like the postal workers’ 1970 wildcat strike, these activities tend to be more effective and harder to defeat when they are unofficial.

Prior to Trump’s executive order, federal unions were experiencing a surge in membership. Moribund locals were springing to life and new ones were in the process of formation. A new group, the Federal Unionists Network, emerged to coordinate activity at the grassroots level across many agencies and unions. This energy will undoubtedly seek an outlet. If there are no longer structures in place to direct that energy into orderly channels, then it could take surprising forms in the months ahead.

There is at least one piece of evidence that the Trump administration is worried about the prospect of a debilitating job action. The one group of federal employees whose work is clearly intertwined with national security—but who also happen to boast a history of job actions—was conspicuously exempted from the union-stripping provisions of Trump’s executive order: air traffic controllers. Apparently, the administration is reluctant to antagonize workers who have the power to snarl air traffic if a small, strategically placed group of them simply call in sick.

Will federal workers rediscover the militancy that was once not uncommon in their ranks and resist Trump’s union-busting with collective action? Will the broader union movement and its allies stand with them, putting their own organizations on the line to defend workers’ basic rights? On the answers to those questions will turn not only the fate of the union movement for decades to come, but of a multiracial American democracy in which the right to collective bargaining has served as an essential pillar for almost a century.