Can't strike or negotiate wages, but...

Sharda Fornnarino got the news in early August.

The Department of Veterans Affairs was ending nearly all of its collective bargaining agreements. The agency gave labor unions just days to get out of federal buildings.

"We went in on the weekend, and we emptied our office space," says Fornnarino, an outpatient surgery nurse at the Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center outside Denver, where she's also local director for National Nurses United...

...But President Trump has abandoned that idea. Instead, he's argued that federal employee unions pose a danger to the country. In March, he issued an executive order ending collective bargaining rights for more than one million federal workers at about 20 federal agencies. Almost immediately, many agencies halted automatic deductions of union dues from employee paychecks, cutting off a critical source of cash flow to the unions. Just ahead of Labor Day, Trump issued a new executive order, adding about a half dozen agencies to the list.

...The president's rationale is that it hurts national security when unions are able to obstruct management. In a "fact sheet" issued alongside the March executive order, the White House cited the many legal challenges unions have brought. "Certain Federal unions have declared war on President Trump's agenda," the document said...

...Notably, the executive order excludes agencies that have supported him, including those representing law enforcement and Customs and Border Protection employees.

npr.org - Trump federal workers labor unions va