I’m from Canada and I find it very confusing that US federal workers haven’t gone on strike with all the BS being pulled by DOGE. I feel pretty confident that if the same thing was done in Canada with random mass layoffs of critical services and hostile takeovers of critical infrastructure, that there would be a general strike of federal employees. Why has there been no labour action in the states?
Beyond the very good points already made about it being illegal for them to strike and they could immediately lose all ability to work anywhere in the federal government again, it’s imperative you remember the point of DOGE is to get rid of the federal government. Elon and his kiddies are looking for an excuse to close down entire departments of government. If one of them went on strike, they could simply declare that all of them are fired for felony activity and never refill their positions.
Striking in this case is the same as quitting, and none of them want to give in and let their government die. It’s the same reason no one is taking the voluntary severance. They’re fighting for their government as best they can from where they are. It’s all of our job out here to rescue them
There’s a lot of risk to striking for a federal worker. First of all, it’s against the law for any employee of the US Federal Government to do so according to 5 USC §7311
An individual may not accept or hold a position in the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia if he-
…
(3) participates in a strike, or asserts the right to strike, against the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia; or
(4) is a member of an organization of employees of the Government of the United States or of individuals employed by the government of the District of Columbia that he knows asserts the right to strike against the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia.
There exists federal employee unions, but they don’t have as much power because they can’t strike. Additionally, there’s another US code (18 U.S.C. §1918) that reinforces this idea, also noting that it’s a felony that can carry the charge of a fine or jail time up to 1 year and prevents you from being employed by the Federal Government (using the exact same language).
Additionally, the Office of Management & Budget can name you “unsuitable” for Federal employment if you participate in a strike even without the felony conviction.
This happened in the 80s when a bunch of Air Traffic Controllers went on strike for higher wages and the President at the time (Ronald Reagan) just fired them all and hired new controllers at lower wages who wouldn’t strike. There was no recourse for those fired workers.
Given all of this, I wouldn’t even risk it with DOGE to strike right now. Under a more labor friendly administration, you might be able to get away with it. But with Musk running the country, the most likely outcome would be that they’d fire them all for striking, the courts wouldn’t restore them like they have with others because they did actually violate the law, and Musk would spin it as locating and eliminating the “corruption”
P.S. - For those keeping score at home, both of the aforementioned US codes are the same codes that bar someone for working for the Federal Government for advocating for the overthrow of the government (that’s what subsections (1) and (2) state). Yes that means the Federal Government, at least as far as its own employees are concerned, equate striking with revolution
Lots of good replies here but I’ll respond to this one. It’s pretty crazy that striking is illegal for federal workers. I never considered Canada a bastion of worker solidarity but our public sector unions are very strong.
In Ontario a few years back, the provincial government said it was going to pre-emptively introduce legislation to prevent one of the public sector unions from striking. The union responded by saying they would do it anyways. This very quickly spiraled into a threat of a general strike not just from the other public sector unions but also private sector unions. The legislation was rolled back after just one week (Decent write-up here).
So it is surprising for me to hear how the public sector unions in the states are so weak and I’m amazed that such blatantly anti-worker legislation was able to be introduced. In Canada, strong unions and stability of work are some major selling points of government employment and I guess I’m surprised government employees aren’t standing up for those benefits. Is there a perception that this will all just blow over in four years and if they can weather the storm, it will work out in the end?
Unfortunately for Americans too, solidarity striking (the main premise behind being able to perform a General Strike), is also illegal (most citations I could find cite 29 U.S.C. § 158(b)(4) though I couldn’t work out specifically what verbage outlawed it). Keep in mind to that this specific labor law only applies to private labor unions that are administered by the NLRB, federal unions have a different agency.
I know a few people, including a family member, that work for the federal government, and I think they want to try to weather the storm, but it’s hard. Trump wasn’t a fluke in 2016 and he certainly isn’t one now. Just because he and his party might be out of power in 4 years doesn’t mean much. Half the country still thinks their jobs and livelihood are superfluous at best and harmful at worst. And with four more years of the hack and slash mentality going, it may take a while to rebuild all of this. To get from the precursors to the New Deal through to the EPA was almost 50 years of slow progress.
One thing that I think doesn’t get pointed out enough is that for the United States, the number of federal employees (pre-Musk) is basically the same as it was in the early 60s. The actual size of the federal government hasn’t changed in 60 years by any appreciable amount. All that extra revenue and debt in the budget has gone to federal contractors.
Worker solidarity is pretty much non-existent in the US. The YouTube channel William Spaniel talks more about the game theory behind this. Too few in the fed want to stick their necks out. Really we need a general strike, but too few will show up. This makes it trivial to crush the dissent. US culture has huge influence from Libertarian politics and Ayn Rand’s Objectivity; this is just an example of why those are ultimately bad for any society.
It’s also illegal for some to strike. Kinda hard to work from jail if you need that paycheck.
