Unions representing teachers, federal workers and healthcare workers are seeking to reverse the Trump administration’s gutting of a little-known federal agency that provides crucial mediation services to help resolve labor disputes between workers and employers.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan on Monday, seeks to reverse cuts at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services (FMCS), a key labor relations agency that serves both private and public sectors and saves the nation $500 million annually that would otherwise be lost due to strikes and other disruptions.
The AFL-CIO, the United Federation of Teachers, the American Federation of Government Employees and nearly a dozen other unions joined in the suit, saying cuts to the agency endanger both workers and the economy. The cuts stem from a March 14 executive order that calls for a near-elimination of the agency and six others in the interest of the president’s government-slashing agenda led by the Elon Musk-run Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Trump’s cuts to the agency have directly imperiled ongoing negotiations at charter schools and hospitals in the New York City region, including at elementary schools in The Bronx and Queens and a hospital on Long Island, according to the lawsuit and sources who spoke with THE CITY.
“The Trump administration has no legal right to eliminate FMCS through executive action and no rational reason to eliminate an agency that helps working people,” UFT president Michael Mulgrew said in a statement.
United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew speaks outside City Hall, Oct. 2, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
The FMCS is a small agency created more than 75 years ago that helps resolve employer-union conflicts and avoid or end strikes in both the public and private sector. The agency offers many of its services free of charge.
It has played a crucial role in some of the most prominent labor negotiations in recent years, including at Starbucks and at Boeing, as well as at the three-day nurses’ strike in New York City in 2023.
The unions in their lawsuit argue that the Trump administration has no legal authority under federal law and the U.S. Constitution to execute its mass layoffs at the agency because they amount to an effective dismantling of FMCS, which has prevented it from performing its statutory responsibilities.
The effective shutdown of the agency has had an immediate impact on labor relations in New York City and across the nation, such as driving up negotiation costs and throwing existing cases into disarray.
The pain is particularly acute for unions representing health care workers, which are required under federal law to settle strikes with the agency’s mediators. Unions representing those workers must provide a 10-day notice advance notice to the employer and the FMCS before any strike, picket or work stoppage.
The agency played a key role in resolving the three-day strike by 7,000 nurses at Montefiore Medical Center and Mount Sinai Hospital in January 2023. The collective bargaining agreement covering those nurses, who are represented by the New York State Nurses Association, expires at the end of this year.
Council Speaker Adrienne Adams speaks at the nurses picket line outside Montefiore Hospital in The Bronx, Jan. 11, 2023. Credit: Jonathan Custodio/THE CITY
The UFT, NYSNA and District Council 37 are all in active mediation through FMCS and have been left scrambling, according to the lawsuit and sources who spoke with THE CITY.
Nurses at Huntington Hospital/Northwell Health were informed their mediator had been fired at the beginning of their very first mediation session on March 25. The nurses are in the middle of negotiating their first contract with NYSNA after disaffiliating from an independent union late last year. The two parties are still bargaining, but they may need to bring a private mediator if talks continue to stall, said Patty Dowling, a psychiatric nurse at the hospital and a member of the bargaining committee.
“It makes no sense,” she said of the cuts to FMCS. “We can’t streamline discussions, it’s just crazy. We’re going to end up with a deadlock,” added Dowling, saying a potential strike is not out of the question.
The UFT had three active mediation cases with the FMCS when the agency was effectively shut down late last month, two involving charter school teachers and staff, all of which are now on hold.
According to the lawsuit, the union and Merrick Academy in Queens were close to averting a strike and securing a new contract after an FMCS-led bargaining session on March 18. The two parties were scheduled to have a follow-up session on March 27, but the mediator had to cancel it because he was placed on administrative leave.
Without the mediator, the parties “have been unable to make further progress, raising the risk of a strike or a lockout,” according to the lawsuit.
Negotiations between the union and the Global Learning Institute for Girls, a charter school in the South Bronx, are also in limbo as a result of the cuts. After making no progress with a private mediator for a full year, the school and the union agreed to work with an FMCS mediator and the parties “saw immediate progress” — until that mediator was placed on administrative leave on March 26.
“It is unclear whether the parties will be able to reach an agreement without the FMCS mediator’s assistance, and the risk of a strike or lockout goes up every day that UFT’s members work without a contract,” according to the lawsuit.
Only four mediators remain at the FMCS where there were previously 143. The agency employed a total 202 people as of last year, and its operation costs taxpayers $55 million annually — or 0.0014% of the federal budget, according to the agency. Conservative estimates from the agency claim that for every $1 invested in FMCS, the economy recovers more than $9, a 900% return on investment.
“All of that with less than 150 mediators spread out across the country,” Jefferson Dedrick, an FMCS commissioner based in Buffalo, NY, wrote in a LinkedIn post on March 26. “I am sad to see such an impactful agency be dismantled.”
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