AFGE on Federal Worker Purge, Social Security and Union Rights

Jacqueline Simon, Policy Director of the American Federation of Government Employees, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to deliver a comprehensive and deeply sobering account of what has happened to the federal workforce since Jan. 20, 2025, and what it means for every American who depends on the government services those workers provide.

300,000 federal positions have been eliminated. Union rights have been stripped from nearly 1 million federal employees through an aggressive exploitation of a national security loophole, with the administration's own paperwork admitting the action was retaliatory against AFGE.

Social Security Administration field offices are being closed and staffing gutted. VA healthcare has lost 30,000 positions. Transportation Safety Administration privatization is being openly pursued. AFGE is fighting back in court on multiple fronts, but Simon was candid: the damage being done while the litigation proceeds will take years to fully reckon with.

• The Trump administration stripped collective bargaining rights from roughly a million federal employees, half the federal workforce, by exploiting a national security loophole in federal labor law, applying it to entire agencies, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, large portions of DHS, the Department of Defense and the EPA, despite many having no connection to national security. The administration's own policy guidance acknowledged the action was taken in retaliation against AFGE for its perceived hostility toward the administration, providing the basis for AFGE's First Amendment legal challenge.
• 300,000 federal positions were eliminated — not just employees let go, but the jobs themselves abolished, the most effective mechanism for permanently reducing federal capacity. The Social Security Administration, already critically understaffed before 2025, has seen telework eliminated, field offices closed or hollowed out and staff shifted from face-to-face constituent services to phone lines. This has resulted in operational failures, which Simon said are being used to build a political case for privatization.
• Federal employees' statutory collective bargaining rights are already among the most constrained of any workforce, as they cannot strike, bargain over pay, health insurance or retirement benefits and can only negotiate working conditions. This makes the administration's drive to eliminate even those limited rights, and the broader push to privatize TSA and VA healthcare, a strategy Simon said could backfire. Unlike federal employees, individuals working for private contractors can unionize and strike.

Jan. 20, 2025 and Everything That Followed

Jacqueline Simon has been fighting for federal workers for a long time. As policy director of the AFGE, she has seen administrations come and go, each with its own approach to the federal workforce. She has not seen anything like this.

She started at the beginning: Jan. 20, 2025. Within days of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, executive orders were ready to go. The most consequential stripped collective bargaining rights from roughly a million federal employees, half the federal workforce. This was done by exploiting a loophole in the law that allows the president to exempt agencies from union protections on national security grounds.

What followed was not a surgical application of that authority. It was a sweeping, aggressive use of it that covered entire agencies, the Department of Veterans Affairs in full, large portions of the Department of Homeland Security, chunks of the Department of Defense, the Social Security Administration, the EPA and others. Many of the union members in these agencies have no plausible connection to national security. Unions that had endorsed the president or stayed quiet were largely left alone. AFGE, which had been outspoken, was not. The administration's own written policy guidance admitted the action was retaliatory. That admission became the foundation of AFGE's First Amendment challenge in the courts.

300,000 Jobs Gone

Simon placed the overall scope in stark terms: 300,000 federal positions have been eliminated. Not 300,000 employees suspended or reassigned. The jobs themselves have been abolished, which is the most effective way to permanently reduce federal capacity. Eliminating a position removes any obligation to justify the action against the individual who held it. The result is that many agencies across the federal government no longer have the capacity to carry out their missions.

Simon was clear that the consequences of the administration’s actions are only beginning to be felt. Many of the positions were abolished in late 2025. As a result, operational failures, delayed benefits, longer wait times, reduced services and safety gaps are now arriving. She described a pattern that she believes is intentional: understaff and underfund public services until they visibly fail, then point to the failure as justification for privatization. She has watched it happen at VA healthcare, Social Security and now TSA.

Social Security: Designed to Fail

The Social Security Administration was already critically understaffed before January 2025. One of the tools that helped it retain its staff was telework, which was eliminated immediately after the inauguration. Workers who had built their lives around at least partial remote work arrangements left rather than comply with a full return-to-office mandate and were not replaced.

The agency's field offices, where constituents can walk in to get a copy of their Social Security card, apply for benefits, consult with specialists about when and how to claim retirement benefits or get hands-on help navigating a disability application, are being closed or quietly gutted.

Staff from those offices have been moved to the 800 number to improve wait-time statistics. The result is that the Americans who most need in-person assistance — people with disabilities who cannot navigate online systems or follow complex phone instructions — have nowhere to go. Simon described it as setting the agency up to fail so that when it does, the privatization argument is already waiting.

VA Healthcare, TSA and the Privatization Playbook

The Department of Veterans Affairs has lost 30,000 healthcare positions. Wait times for veteran appointments will lengthen. The argument that the VA cannot do anything right will follow. TSA is being targeted explicitly, with proponents using immigration enforcement debates in Congress as political cover for a privatization push.

Simon noted the irony with some sharpness: federal employees cannot strike, and they have no right to bargain over pay or benefits. However, if VA healthcare and TSA are privatized, those contractor employees will be able to unionize and, unlike their federal counterparts, strike.

Veterans Wearing the Union Card

Up to a third of AFGE members are military veterans. Inside the VA, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, that proportion is even higher. Simon said the suggestion that these workers' union membership is somehow inconsistent with national security is not just legally unsound — it is personally insulting to people who wore the uniform and were willing to give their lives for this country.

Some Republican members of Congress, she noted, have shown real courage on the issue, particularly those who were themselves union members in law enforcement, teaching and other trades before entering Congress. They understand what unions do. They are hearing directly from veteran union members in their districts. The broader Republican caucus remains unwilling to challenge the administration, fearing primary challenges from candidates who would never break with the president on any issue.

A Very Narrow Right and They Want to Take It Too

Simon deliberately reminded listeners just how constrained federal employees' collective bargaining rights already are. They cannot strike. They cannot bargain over pay. They cannot negotiate health insurance or retirement benefits. All they can bargain over is working conditions — and even that limited right is frequently just an early warning system, a mechanism through which workers learn about changes to their working conditions before those changes are imposed. The administration, Simon said, finds even that too much. The goal is not just to weaken federal unions. It is to eliminate them.

AFGE is fighting that effort on every available legal front. The litigation is proceeding. The damage, as Simon acknowledged, is accumulating in the meantime. The union's national president, she said, remains relentlessly optimistic — a posture that helps keep staff and members going through what she described as genuinely depressing circumstances.

More information on AFGE's legal challenges and member resources are available at afge.org.

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