THAT TIME NTEU SMACKED DOWN A U.S. PRESIDENT

The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) is unique among unions. Despite its name, it represents thousands of employees who work for agencies other than those in the Treasury Department.  It is a very flat organization, meaning that any local union president can pick up the phone and get the National President on the line to talk about a problem they are having with management or staff. There is no hierarchy in between.  And unlike most unions the vast majority of the union’s staff are attorneys. So focused is the union on using laws and regulations to protect employees that some outsiders have said it is not a union, but “A law firm masquerading as a union.”  Personally, I consider that a deep compliment. It enables the union to assign highly trained professionals to each of its nearly 300 locals.

I was recently cleaning out an old file and found a pay stub I got back in 1974. It was part of a $514 million dollar judgement NTEU won on behalf of all federal employees. It was also the case that put this union on its path to building a streamlined, high impact organization. Here is the story.

Back then, like now, the law required the President of the United States to follow a process each year to decide how much, if any, he wants to increase federal employee salaries to maintain comparability with the private sector.  Perhaps he was distracted by the deep economic mess the country was in similar to the one the Orange President is leading us into now. We will never know the real reason, but then President Nixon decided that because he was the President of the world’s most powerful nation he did not have to follow some non-discretionary legal process niceties.  He decided to skip the details and simply announced that there would be no raise the following year.  “El Naranja” has done the same thing imposing most of his tariff taxes on Americans.

While the vast majority of those folks opposed to that decision pondered how can they reverse a President, NTEU followed its cultural predisposition to litigate and sued Nixon.  To make a long story short, Nixon scoffed at the thought that someone could force the United States President to do something, especially something as petty as following the proper procedure in making a decision.  His lawyers likened his powers to that of the ancient Kings of England. In contrast, NTEU merely pieced together a legal argument going all the way back to the founding of the country and the purpose of the U.S. court system.  It was arcane stuff that would bore most every person on the planet, but it was high legal scholarship.  And once the courts finished reading each side’s legal briefs and listening to their oral arguments, the court smacked down the President telling him he is not above the law.  If the law says he has no choice but to do something, he must do that. It ordered Nixon to distribute about $514 million in back pay to federal employees in every agency, not just those represented by NTEU.

That case did a number of things beyond put money in pockets. It introduced NTEU to the world, it confirmed that building a union around deep legal talent was an outstanding approach, and even today the case is being cited by parties opposing Trump’s decisions in several areas. If you want to read the court’s decision, click here.

Trump has established himself as a guy who acts first and thinks about it later, if at all.  When he declared that about 50% of all federal employees could no longer be represented by unions, he made it easier for unions to sue him in court. Prior to his rash action,  law prohibited unions that could represent fed employees in grievances and arbitration could not take most issues to court. By taking away NTEU’s right to grieve and arbitrate, Trump removed the biggest obstacle NTEU and other unions had to going right to court to fight him.

NTEU went on from there to win several other nine figure back pay decisions.  In one, the agency admitted that unless the court did something it owed NTEU members about $900,000,000.00.  The court said, “Too bad. That’s the law.”