WASHINGTON — It’s been a rough year for Alaska’s 15,000 federal employees. Along with job losses and funding uncertainty, in March President Trump signed an executive order to take away union protections from a large swath of the federal workforce.
But the U.S. House gave public employee unions a ray of hope last week.
The Republican-led House delivered a rare rebuke of Trump and passed a bill to restore union rights for federal employees.
Twenty Republicans joined Democrats to pass it. Alaska Congressman Nick Begich wasn’t among them.
Stephanie Rice, a federal worker from Anchorage, said she was surprised by his vote, given Alaska’s high number of federal jobs.
“That's 4.6% of the state's total employment. That's a huge chunk of his constituents that are directly impacted by this legislation,” she said. “And so I was very disappointed to see that he didn't vote to restore our collective bargaining rights.”
Rice is president of National Federation of Federal Employees Local 1945. She works for the Bureau of Land Management’s National Operations Center but said she’s speaking for herself and her union, not the agency.
Begich didn’t respond to an interview request nor provide a statement explaining why he voted no.
But James Comer, R-Ky., who led the debate against the bill on the House floor, said Trump got rid of union contracts to provide more effective personnel management and “more streamlined disciplinary procedures” for federal employees.
“The reality is that pre-existing union agreements the president never signed onto can subvert these efforts,” Comer said. “They provide barriers to accountability beyond basic employee protections that exist in law.”
Begich’s vote, and his position on organized labor more generally, align with most Republicans in Congress, but it marks a departure for Alaska’s congressional delegation.
The AFL-CIO ranked Alaska’s Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski as the Republican senators who most often voted pro-union in the last Congress. And unions were big contributors to the late Congressman Don Young’s political campaigns.
“Congressman Young always said that the unions weren't the enemy. They were the canary in the coal mine telling Congress when things were wrong in the facilities or the agency,” recalled David Traver, chief steward of AFGE Local 3028, which represents employees at the Veterans Affairs medical center in Anchorage.
Traver said Begich hasn’t shown an inclination to be the champion of organized labor that Young was.
Begich last year won the endorsement of the National Right to Work Committee, a counter force to union power, while the AFL-CIO endorsed his opponent.
Unions like the one at the Anchorage VA are still representing employees, but Trump’s order in essence tore up their contract. Travers said it leaves workers vulnerable to unfair treatment.
The House-passed bill to restore union contracts hasn’t gone before the Senate yet. Labor leaders say a likelier route for becoming law would be as part of a government spending bill next year.
