By Daniel Wiessner
(Reuters) -A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the administration of President Donald Trump from stripping hundreds of thousands of federal employees of the ability to unionize and collectively bargain over working conditions.
Senior U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington, D.C., blocked a March executive order by Trump from being implemented pending the outcome of a lawsuit by the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents about 160,000 federal employees.
The union says Trump’s order, which exempted more than a dozen federal agencies from obligations to bargain with unions, violates federal workers’ labor rights and the U.S. Constitution.
Friedman, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, said he would issue an opinion explaining his decision in the next few days.
The White House and the NTEU did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump in the executive order excluded from collective bargaining obligations agencies that he said “have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.”
The order applies to the Justice, State, Defense, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services departments, among other agencies.
The order affects about 75% of the roughly 1 million federal workers represented by unions, according to court filings. NTEU has said the order applies to about 100,000 of its members and that it is losing $2 million a month in dues that agencies are no longer deducting from workers’ paychecks.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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