Union perks already cost taxpayers $163 million. Imagine how much more negotiations add to that
No one knows how much taxpayers spend on bargaining with federal labor unions, and President-elect Donald Trump can right that wrong. Building on reforms from his first administration and with support from the new Department of Government Efficiency, he could direct every federal agency to report how much it spends dealing with government labor unions, something no agency has ever done. Disclosure would provide transparency and accountability for the American people, who would surely be shocked to learn what the federal government is bargaining over and how much it costs.
As President Ronald Reagan’s first term director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), I saw firsthand how costly the federal collective bargaining process is to taxpayers — and how it’s almost entirely out of the public eye. Trump knows this is a problem, too, having issued an executive order in 2018 directing federal agencies to disclose union perks, which OPM calculated have $163 million annually.
Yet that executive order — which President Joe Biden rescinded immediately after taking office — was just a start. It’s even more important to examine what’s very likely a larger cost to taxpayers: How much the federal bureaucracy spends negotiating with unions, managing union contracts and otherwise bargaining with unions in the federal workforce, which is over 1 million taxpayer-funded workers strong.
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To be sure, the union perks deserve attention. Most notably, union representatives often get to do union work like negotiating contracts or fighting disciplinary action on the taxpayer’s dime. Some federally paid workers spend 100% of their time doing union-related work, which means these public servants aren’t serving the public.
The federal government spends $163 million a year on union perks, but no one knows how much more it spends negotiating with unions. FILE: The U.S. Office of Personnel Management building in Washington June 5, 2015. (REUTERS/Gary Cameron)
Unions also routinely get free or discounted access to federal property. At the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem, Virginia, a government union received half a hospital wing — more than 5,000 square feet, with a kitchen, private bathrooms and outdoor patio, mostly for the union president’s benefit.
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Yet the cost of bargaining deserves just as much attention. What little information exists paints a picture of significant spending on picayune matters. Last fall, North Carolina Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx, then-chairwoman of the House Committee on the Education and the Workforce, documented how government unions draw out negotiations with federal agencies.
That includes haggling over the height of cubicle desk panels, demanding designated smoking areas on tobacco-free federal property and recognizing employees’ right to wear spandex. Americans pay for every second that federal officials sit across from their union counterparts arguing about such issues, as well as all the related travel expenses, paperwork and legal hoop-jumping.
A new report from the Institute for the American Worker, titled "Transparency Needed in the Process of Federal Collective Bargaining," sheds further light on these costs. The institute sent Freedom of Information Act requests to 28 federal agencies seeking data on expenditures related to collective bargaining. Twenty-one responded, though none had complete records.
The Small Business Administration spent more than $6 million on salary for staff involved in collective bargaining in 2022 and 2023. The Department of Labor spent more than $1 million in travel-related costs. Considering there are hundreds of federal agencies, these numbers are a fraction of the total cost to taxpayers.
For the sake of taxpayers, the facts must come to light. Trump can deliver real transparency by requiring agencies to annually disclose how much they spend on federal collective bargaining and the impact of such spending on government efficiency and effectiveness. Americans deserve to know how much they pay for negotiations with unions over wearing spandex, smoking cigarettes, and everything else that has nothing to do with public service.
Donald J. Devine served as director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (1981-1985) and is senior scholar at The Fund for American Studies.
