一名联邦法官拒绝了联邦工会暂时阻止特朗普政府实施的请求大规模燃烧关于试用员工和延期辞职提议称法院对此事“可能缺乏管辖权”。
相反，负责此事的法官克里斯托弗·库珀(Christopher Cooper)在他的裁决中写道，此事应该提交给联邦劳工关系管理局(Federal Labor Relations Authority)。
“法院现在将驳回该动议，因为它可能缺乏对工会索赔的主题管辖权，”法官写道。
“相反，他们必须通过国会在《联邦服务劳资关系法》(FSLMRS)中建立的方案来寻求挑战，该方案规定首先由联邦劳资关系局(FLRA)进行行政审查，然后在上诉法院进行司法审查，”他补充说。
这项裁决是在周二的一次情况听证会后做出的，法官在听证会上询问了原告，为什么他们要将案件提交法院，而不是去FLRA。原告由包括国库雇员工会在内的五个联邦工会组成。
在听证会上，财政部雇员工会声称向法院提起诉讼因为开火的规模和形势的紧迫性而没有去FLRA。
然而，在他的裁决中，法官写道:“NTEU声称，如果它首先在FLRA进行诉讼，它寻求的救济将更难获得，而不是说它有权避免在FLRA进行诉讼。”
“法院承认，地方法院对这些全面的行政行为进行审查可能更为有利。但NTEU没有说明它为什么不能代表一类原告向FLRA寻求救济，并承认它会要求其他机构遵循一项有利于它的行政法官的裁决，”他补充说。
上周提起的诉讼是挑战埃隆·马斯克的几起诉讼以及政府效率部大规模削减联邦劳动力的努力。
该诉讼指控特朗普政府在多个机构解雇大量联邦雇员的努力，包括最近向200多万联邦雇员提出的延期辞职，违反了国会建立联邦劳动力的权力，以及规定如何减少劳动力的联邦程序。
“行政部门充当‘官僚机构的伐木者’与国会作为行政部门机构的创造者、资助者和任务设定者的角色相冲突，”诉讼称。
代表几十个联邦机构和部门数十万员工的工会寻求针对特朗普政府的临时限制令，声称联邦劳动力的大规模减少将导致工会收入的“严重”损失，以及他们在谈判桌上的影响力。
工会声称，财政部雇员工会将失去“多达一半的会费收入和它所代表的大约一半工人。”
司法部的律师反驳了这些指控，认为阻止这些变化的命令将“干涉总统管理、塑造和精简联邦劳动力的能力，以更好地反映政策偏好和美国公众的需求。”
司法部在一份法庭文件中写道:“总统负责指挥行政部门的工作人员，他已经决定，他的机构中负有政治责任的负责人应该采取措施，通过自愿延期辞职、解除某些试用员工的职务以及削减劳动力等措施，精简和现代化工作人员。”。
政府还声称，特朗普下令削减的行政行为“符合适用的法律”，并驳斥了工会对其收入和议价能力潜在损失的担忧，称其为“投机”。
自特朗普重返白宫以来，马斯克一直在努力缩小政府规模，削减数千份联邦合同，削减被认为是浪费的项目，并根除欺诈行为。
在本月早些时候结束延期辞职提议后，特朗普政府在法庭上质疑该计划已经开始裁员通过瞄准大多数是试用员工-最近一两年内加入联邦劳动力队伍的新雇员，根据机构而定，他们受到的保护较少。
根据人事管理办公室的数据，这第一轮裁员可能会影响到联邦政府在过去两年内雇用的20多万名工人。
Judge denies unions' request to block mass firing of probationary employees, buyout offer
A federal judge has denied federal labor unions' request to temporarily block the Trump administration from carrying outmass firingofprobationary employees and deferred resignation offers, saying the court "likely lacks subject matter jurisdiction" over the matter.
Instead, Judge Christopher Cooper, overseeing the matter, wrote in his ruling that the matter should be brought before the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
"The Court will now deny the motion because it likely lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the unions' claims," the judge wrote.
"They must pursue their challenges instead through the scheme established by Congress in the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute ('FSLMRS'), which provides for administrative review by the Federal Labor Relations Authority ('FLRA') in the first instance, followed by judicial review in the courts of appeals," he added.
The ruling comes after a status hearing on Tuesday in which the judge questioned the plaintiffs, which consisted of five federal unions, including the National Treasury Employees Union, about why they would bring the case before the court instead of going to the FLRA.
During the hearing, the Treasury Department employee union contended that itbrought the case to courtinstead of going to the FLRA because of the scale of the firings and the urgency of the situation.
In his ruling, however, the judge wrote: "NTEU claims that the relief it seeks would be harder to get if it proceeds first before the FLRA, not that it has a right to avoid proceeding before the FLRA at all."
"The Court acknowledges that district court review of these sweeping executive actions may be more expedient. But NTEU provides no reason why it could not seek relief from the FLRA on behalf of a class of plaintiffs and admits that it would ask other agencies to follow an administrative judge's ruling in its favor," he added.
The suit, filed last week, is one ofseveral lawsuits challenging Elon Muskand the Department of Government Efficiency's large-scale effort to slash the federal workforce.
The suit alleged the Trump administration's effort to fire massive numbers of federal employees across multiple agencies, including its recent deferred resignation offer to more than 2 million federal employees, violates Congress' power to establish a federal workforce, as well as federal procedures that dictate how the workforce should be reduced.
"The Executive Branch acting as the 'woodchipper for bureaucracy' conflicts with Congress's role as the creator, funder, and mission setter for the executive branch agencies," the lawsuit said.
The unions, which represent hundreds of thousands of employees across dozens of federal agencies and departments, sought a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration, claiming that the mass reduction of the federal workforce would lead to a "critical" loss of revenues for unions, as well as their influence at the bargaining table.
The National Treasury Employees Union, the unions claimed, stands to lose "as much as half of its dues revenue and around half of the workers that it represents."
Lawyers with the Department of Justice pushed back against the allegations, arguing that an order blocking the changes would "interfere with the President's ability to manage, shape, and streamline the federal workforce to more closely reflect policy preferences and the needs of the American public."
"The President is charged with directing the Executive Branch workforce, and he has determined that the politically accountable heads of his agencies should take steps to streamline and modernize the workforce through measures including voluntary deferred resignations, removal of certain probationary employees, and RIFs [reductions in force]," the Justice Department wrote in a court filing.
The government also claimed that Trump's executive action ordering the reductions is "consistent with applicable law" and dismissed the unions' concerns over their potential loss of revenues and bargaining power as "speculative."
Since Trump returned to the White House, Musk has been spearheading efforts to reduce the size of government, slash thousands of federal contracts, cut programs deemed to be wasteful and root out fraud.
After ending its deferred resignation offer earlier this month amid court battles challenging the program, the Trump administrationhas begun layoffsby targetingmostly probationary employees-- recent hires who joined the federal workforce within the last one to two years, depending on the agency, and have fewer protections.
This initial round of layoffs could affect more than 200,000 workers hired by the federal government within the last two years, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management.
