Last week, pursuant to President Donald Trump’s March 27 executive order, the federal government unilaterally voided the collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) covering almost 400,000 Veterans Administration (VA) employees. Since then, it has also voided contracts covering tens of thousands more at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Citizenship and Immigration Services. These moves also end all payroll dues collection by these workers’ unions, throwing them into desperate financial jeopardy.

As Hamilton Nolan has pointed out, this is 2.5 percent of all American unionized workers — making this “by far the largest single action of union-busting in American history.” The Center for American Progress estimates that Trump’s executive order covers four-fifths of all federal workers represented by unions. An earlier federal order to strip almost 50,000 Transportation Security Administration workers of their contractual bargaining rights is temporarily on hold.

Meanwhile, another 154,000 federal workers, many fearing layoffs as a result of separate “reduction in force” orders, have accepted various resignation incentives; numerous others, so far uncounted, have been laid off or fired.