A Letter to President Trump about Federal Employees

Dear President Donald Trump:

The Catholic Labor Network is a national association of Catholic trade unionists, and their supporters in the clergy and social ministry, committed to promoting justice for workers in accordance with Catholic Social Teaching. We write to ask you to rescind the Executive Order Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs issued on March 27, 2025. The order would strip most federal government workers of their union rights.

Since Pope Leo XIII issued his encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1893, Catholic doctrine has upheld the right of workers to form unions and bargain collectively. Despite the tendentious arguments advanced by some contemporary writers, neither Pope Leo nor his successors upholding that teaching through the ages denied that right to workers employed by the public.

Your effort to strip union rights from more than 1 million federal workers thus clashes directly with the teachings of our Church – that every worker has dignity, and the right to organize. And it fits poorly with your expressed desire to uplift the American worker.

We pray you rescind this EO and choose another path.