A union that represents 1,500 of the Agriculture Department's plant protection and quarantine employees is suing the Trump administration after seeing its collective bargaining agreement revoked.
In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., the National Association of Agriculture Employees alleges Trump’s decision to revoke the union’s recognition is unlawful. The administration's reasoning for the decision was that the plant protection employees' primary functions are “national security work."
According to the lawsuit, APHIS Administrator Michael Watson notified NAAE’s president on Tuesday that the agency no longer recognizes the organization as the "exclusive representative” for certain agency employees. He said its collective bargaining agreement is no longer in effect, union representatives will no longer be granted official time for NAAE duties and that dues previously withheld from employees’ pay and transmitted to the organization have been stopped, the lawsuit says.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service was one of a list of agencies subject to a March 27 executive order saying their primary focuses are “intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative or national security work,” which exempts them from federal labor management relations programs. The lawsuit seeks to nullify the order.
The lawsuit argues that the Plant Protection and Quarantine Division protections does not protect the nation’s food supply from “internal subversion or foreign aggression,” but instead from “natural threats posed by pests and plant diseases and not from ‘internal subversion or foreign aggression.” That separates USDA plant protection staff from Customs and Border Protection inspectors, who focus on U.S.-bound cargo shipments that may pose "a risk of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction,” it argues.
Don’t miss a beat! It’s easy to sign up for a FREE month of Agri-Pulse news! For the latest on what’s happening in Washington, D.C. and around the country in agriculture, just click here.
The complaint also says Plant Protection and Quarantine staff have not been trained in the "detection and interception of bio-terrorism agents or weapons of mass destruction.”
“None of our work involves national security,” NAAE President Cole Austen Gandy said in a press release. "The Homeland Security Act of 2002 which transferred that responsibility, as well as 3000 agriculture inspectors who inspect international passengers, luggage and cargo at ports of entry, from the Agriculture Department to Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security.”
A USDA spokesperson declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
Statements from House Ag Committee Ranking Member Angie Craig and United Food and Commercial Workers International President Milton Jones indicate that the Agriculture Department also revoked collective bargaining agreements for unionized Food Safety and Inspection Service employees.
“President Trump must end his war on workers," Craig said in a statement. "Using national security concerns as an excuse to cancel union contacts for thousands of workers at the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and Food Safety and Inspection Service is textbook union-busting and is another step toward hollowing out the highly skilled USDA workforce."
For more news, go to Agri-Pulse.com.
This article was updated with additional information.
