Union leaders prepare for potential fallout from Trump presidency

WASHINGTON — While AFGE union members grappled with the results of Election Day, National Vice President Ottis Johnson Jr. is already working to prepare them for next year.

AFGE represents more than 800,000 federal and D.C. government workers, and Johnson said many of them were concerned about Trump’s promise to reissue and aggressively wield his 2020 Executive Order restoring the President's authority to “remove rogue bureaucrats.” 

Now federal workers fear a likely return of the controversial Schedule F classification which could push out tens of thousands of civil servants if they don’t tow Trump’s line.

The Heritage Foundation’s "Project 2025" also calls for a similar approach to the federal workforce.

Johnson said that’s it’s a problem if federal agencies lose those workers.

“They’re taking their experience with them,” he explained. “All of the knowledge and experience that these agencies had with these people sitting behind a desk now will be gone and lost, and that doesn’t just hurt the agency, it hurts the American people as well.”

Now, Johnson is working to set up a digital storage space for union leaders and advising members to use laptops and Internet networks separate even from the agencies members work for.

Johnson said these steps are necessary, given how Trump’s administration came down hard on union leaders the last time he was in office.

“Locals were getting kicked out of the building and they didn’t have a recourse because we were not prepared for a lot of stuff that came down,” he said.

With Trump’s inauguration just months away, Johnson doesn’t know exactly what will come from the White House, but he hopes his union is ready.

“My phone started ringing around 6 o' clock, with members calling wanting to know what AFGE is going to do, so that’s when we started putting a plan together,” he said. “We don’t know when he will try to start to implement any of his policies, but we’re not going to wait until January 20.”