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Why Is AFGE 238 Suing the EPA? w/ Justin Chen · The 238 Update

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the 238 Update, the voice of the workers who protect the environment.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Maria Robin Somerville, and I'll be the host and producer of this podcast.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: For the next few weeks, I'll be sitting down with experts to discuss the latest news regarding AFGE 238, the union that represents the Environmental Protection Agency.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: You might be wondering why start this podcast now.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in March of 2025, the Trump administration issued an executive order claiming that federal agencies could unilaterally cancel their union's contracts.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: This August, the EPA management did just that, carrying out orders from Administrator Lee Zeldon.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Council 238's existing contract was revoked, leaving about 8,000 EPA workers nationwide without their union rights.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: This came shortly after more than a hundred members were placed on administrative leave for signing an open letter to the administration titled Stand Up for Science.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Without a contract, those members are now facing disciplinary action.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Council 238 has joined forces with other unions and is now filing its own lawsuit against EPA management in an effort to restore the agency's worker protections.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And today I'm joined by Justin Chen, president of the council, to talk about why this happened, what it all means, and how you can help.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so Justin, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Today I would love to start off if you could just give us sort of the rundown of the lawsuit we're discussing today, what it is, and why Council 238 is taking action.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: At the beginning of the Trump administration, there was an executive order that came out in March basically stating that all federal executive agencies had the right to, or they claimed that they had the right for them to terminate union contracts with whatever labor unions were within these federal agencies, including at the Environmental Protection Agency.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: At that point of time, there were already violations of our contract.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: They had recalled us back into the office full-time, violating our telework agreement.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: They had started moving people around also, doing reorganizations without bargaining over them, a whole host of violations which we filed, unfair labor practices against and that kind of thing.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: However, uh in August of 2025, EPA management, based on the order from Administrator Zeldon, formally revoked our contract and canceled recognition of the union.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a whole host of immediate effects that had.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the major things that was brought up actually within the executive order from the Trump administration was the belief that union contracts violated national security interests of the president, essentially.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And when they canceled our contract at the EPA against Council 238, they claimed that our union contract violated potential national security interests for the entirety of this country.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: They actually claimed that the scientific integrity article of our master collective bargaining agreement was the specific part of our contract concerning uh national security interests, if that's believable.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning that they they saw the threat of workers having the right to basically blow the whistle when it came to issues of science, of truth with regards to research, and providing this kind of evidence and explanation to the public as an issue of national security that it would endanger people to tell them the truth.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, what that argument about national security really sounds like to me is that it was more of a challenge on free speech and the ability of the public to access reputable data on environmental safety under this current administration.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Does that sound right?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you know, where this really came to a head as far as the free speech issue and scientific integrity issue was that if if folks may remember last year, around June of 2025, uh there was a letter of dissent concerning the direction that Administrator Zeldon was taking the agency that was organized by a group called Stand Up for Science.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And a number of our members ended up signing onto that letter.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Can you just summarize briefly what was in the Stand Up for Science letter?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it basically was people signing onto a letter saying they didn't agree with the direction that uh EPA administrator Zeldon was taking the agency with regards to attacks on recognition of climate change issues, greenhouse gas issues, the rolling back of various pollutant standards, especially when it was concerning air pollution.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: There were issues also with regards to water pollution issues.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: The Trump administration had pushed against uh what was called the Waters of America Act and the way that it recognized what was a federally enforceable standard upon like the side, like a body of water, essentially.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, you know, the the detoothing of the EPA as a public health agency, more or less.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: What happened from there was that once that letter was publicized and these people's names were put out there, EPA management immediately placed over a hundred people on administrative leave.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: This had never been done before, I believe, within the history of the EPA.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: The use of administrative leave basically for the purposes of, you know, not officially a disciplinary action, but effectively being a disciplinary action, is that these people posed a threat of national security or of some sort of security, basically, like a like a hazard essentially to the agency that they could not no longer be able to access, you know, their computer, their email, etc., and were basically iced out from doing their jobs.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to remember at this time, uh, this was June-July before the cancellation of our contract and the lack of recognition of the union uh by the EPA.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: In August, they had formally canceled our contract and formally no longer recognized AFG Council 238 as the representative for the members as their union, essentially.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And no longer did these people have wine garden rights, no longer had the grievance procedures, all that kind of stuff.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then at that point, that's when they actually issued the formal discipline for these hundred-plus people, including two-week-long suspensions with no pay firings for people.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, for our newer folks who are probationary employees, which are effectively treated as at-will employees, meaning that they can be fired at any point for no specific reason.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: But they also ended up trying to fire a number of folks who were longer-term employees who had tenure basically, and that means they have protections in front of the Merit System Protection Board and are able to contest their firings.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: But nonetheless, management had waited until after the cancellation of our contract, and they no longer recognize the Council 238 as a union anymore to take action against these people.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because with recognition of the union and with recognition of the contract, we could immediately contest any sort of these disciplinary actions through the terms of the contract, through the grievance procedures, as well as unfair labor practice filings and such.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Are there any tangible stories or anecdotes that you can point to as like directly caused by um no longer having a recognized contract?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, unfortunately, the EPA Office of Research and Development effectively doesn't exist anymore.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Quite a number of our members effectively were iced out and very cruelly told that they would have to relocate and take on jobs that they had no experience in.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um I have a a very specific example where we had one member who basically, for the last, I think, over 20 years actually, had been focused on doing water modeling uh through computer programs.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: So effectively desk work to do very, very important plume modeling and such within water bodies, Office of Research Development in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: When the Office of Research and Development was terminated, this person basically had to sit Pat for months on end without really any work to do because they were told not to do anything.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then within the past two or three months, they were told that they were gonna have to move to Dallas, Texas, and take on a job as an on-scene coordinator.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: What an on-scene coordinator does is basically emergency response work and effectively are continually on call and have to travel fairly regularly to various incidences uh within a region, essentially.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And if he was to move to EPA Region 6, based out of Dallas, Texas, that basically means that they would be on call to go do work in all the states that touch Texas and Texas itself at basically any moment.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we're taught we're talking someone moving from like what is essentially a desk job to someone who's now in the field doing emergency response.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is that correct?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And not not just even not not even just like going to a facility and just like walking through it or something like that.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about emergency response.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about stuff like you know what happened in East Palestine, Ohio, uh wildfires in uh Southern California, the Maui wildfires, all that kind of stuff.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: As I said, this person was effectively doing desk work, doing computer modeling for 20 plus years, and then all of a sudden they were told to take on a job that required extreme physical labor, essentially, and continually being on call to for travel.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: This person was within a year of retirement, so they are in their 60s at this point.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: So they effectively were being told that you know we want we want you to quit.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're forcing you to quit, essentially.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And had the union contract been available to them, we could have immediately grieved this issue and been able to fight on behalf of this member in front of the various arbitrators as well as the FLRA that their rights were violated.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm curious what um the efforts look like within the union to get the contract recognized and what kind of legislative efforts you all have been making.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so in addition to filing lawsuits and fighting within the legal realm, uh one of the biggest things that we have organized our member activists to do is to speak to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a large number of folks participating in the annual legislative conference in February.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Last year we had over 40 people come out from around the country to go speak to their lawmakers.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think we had over 200 appointments basically speaking to congressionals about issues concerning the workplace, the revocation of our contract, and basically how this current administration is gonna harm the constituencies of all these various lawmakers and not be able to protect these people from pollution and issues concerning the environment.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where it brought us to actually the passage of what was the Protect America Workforce Act within the House, actually.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: So the Protect America Workforce Act basically would counteract the executive order of the Trump administration that allowed for the cancellation of the various union contracts throughout all the different executive agencies.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a great victory to be able to pass it in the House, but we still have to get it passed in the Senate.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but we are looking towards this uh November election, and if we mobilize our folks and we mobilize the rest of the organized labor movement as well as all other people with vested interests of actually having a functioning country, you know, we can actually get friendly lawmakers uh within the Senate to be able to pass the Protect America Workforce Act and basically force the issue in front of Trump.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, how can members get involved?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: What's next for the unit?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think the most important thing that they can do is actually get in touch with their local officers, find out when their next general membership meeting is, and they'll be able to get a whole bunch of details with regards to various organizing actions that are taking place within their office as well as also in the broader community.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: We'll continue to actually send out email updates uh to all the membership through the council, but each local will also have individual updates too and communications to their members.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes it's kind of uh fun social gatherings, happy hours, and that kind of thing where people can just uh you know fill camaraderie with each other, be able to talk about their issues, and then actually, you know, what we hope for is bringing these people together that organic organizing conversations happen.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: In October, actually, we're having a gathering of over 40 uh union stewards and activists in Denver, Colorado, with an organization called Labor Notes, where we will be working on skills with regards to membership organizing and how we can best protect our members and be able to stand up for our rights even without union contract recognition.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, that's incredibly challenging, but I know that the people that are part of our membership that work for the EPA, they don't do their work because it's easy.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: They do it because they know it's right and that they, you know, have a passion for it.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do you have any last kind of call to action or any way people can stay informed?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the the biggest calls to action I have for folks is that if you're listening to this and you're not a dues paying member, please become a duespaying member.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Go to joinafe.org and sign up there.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then beyond that, get in touch with your local officers, find out various organizing activities, attend your general membership meeting, learn what is going on and what you can do, especially with November midterms coming up.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: I know that various legislative political coordinators are gonna be looking for people to do block walking for union-friendly lawmakers and candidates and such, so that's a great way to get involved.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, the the baseline thing is talk to your fellow workers, you know, regardless of what management does and what the Trump administration does, as long as workers are willing to stand together and organize, the union will be there, regardless of whatever paperwork or lack of thereof there is, essentially.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because when people are willing to do the right thing and stand together, that's where a union is formed.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Justin, thank you so much for joining us today.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's all for today on the 238 update.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: To get involved, go to AFGE238.org.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is brought to you by members of AFGE Council 238 and its affiliated locals.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can subscribe to the 238 update on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.