AFL-CIO President Responds to DOGE Attacks on Key Labor Rights Federal Agency

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler on Wednesday issued the following statement on the Trump administration’s decimation of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), including closing field offices and drastically cutting the agency’s mediators and other staff:

"Dismantling the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service—a small but important federal agency that helps bring labor and management together to solve problems between workers and employers—will be a destructive move for workers, businesses, and the economy as a whole. Shuttering FMCS means longer and drawn-out contract negotiations; delays in implementing new union contracts that raise wages and improve benefits; and disruption to the economy from strikes and lockouts that keep experienced, skilled employees from doing their jobs. This action is an attack on people who work for a living and will suppress the expansion of good union jobs with fair contracts that benefit workers and employers alike. Once again, it’s clear the DOGE agenda is about what’s best for the billionaires, not the working people of this country—and we’ll see the administration in court."

The FMCS, created by Congress as a neutral and independent government agency upon enactment of the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947 (Taft-Hartley Act), has an annual budget of just $55 million and saves half a billion dollars a year by preventing, minimizing and resolving work stoppages and labor disputes in the private sector and across the federal workforce. In fact, just last year FMCS helped Con Edison and UWUA Local 1-2 reach a four-year agreement for 8,000 utility workers, preventing a strike during a heat wave and ensuring continuous power supply and public safety for millions of New Yorkers. Read more from The Guardian, The Nation, and Federal News Network.