Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a champion of private sector unions, wrote in an August 1937 letter to the National Federation of Federal Employees that “All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

A report released last month by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on the massive influence and cost of union control within the federal government demonstrates how prescient FDR’s warning about government union bargaining really was.

This report revealed that, in the year 2024 alone, union operatives in the federal government had received $207 million in taxpayer subsidies to perform well over 3 million hours of union tasks. These are hours they were on the government payroll, but not performing work to contribute to the missions of the agencies that supposedly employ them. Among the worst offenders were the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Department of War, and the Department of Homeland Security, which spent $20-40 million each purely on union business last year.

The report shows why President Trump was right to issue his

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