WASHINGTON - Today is #RedforFeds, a national day of action that coincides with a federal court hearing to challenge the Trump administration’s executive orders that target the bargaining rights of more than 300,000 federal workers who have dedicated their lives to public service, including more than 6,000 educators who educate military and Department of Defense (DOD) families across the world.
Inspired by the #RedforEd movement this spring, National Education Association (NEA) and Federal Education Association (FEA) members joined thousands of #RedforFeds supporters across the country in solidarity with the public servants standing up to the Trump administration.
“The harmful and ill-conceived executive orders proposed by the Trump administration are an affront to the women and men serving in our military safeguarding our country as well as to the thousands of public servants – teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers – working hard every day to educate their families in Department of Defense schools,” said NEA President Lily Eskelsen García. “Like the hundreds of thousands of educators from West Virginia to Arizona this spring, educators working in D.O.D. schools are standing up for their rights to have a voice. If Donald Trump gets his way, these educators will not have a right to advocate for the schools their students deserve. We cannot afford to stand by and let Trump trample on our collective bargaining rights. Our military families deserve better than that.”
A coalition of 13 unions, including FEA, representing 300,000 federal workers employed in hundreds of occupations ranging from teachers in D.O.D. schools, to immigration judges, to NASA rocket scientists, to welders at naval shipyards, sued the Trump administration for violating the rights of government workers. The 13 unions filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia.
“Our Association believes that educators’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions,” said H.T. Nguyen, Executive Director and General Counsel for the Federal Education Association, the NEA affiliate representing Department of Defense schools employees. “These executive orders seek to silence and intimidate the hard-working employees who have made the D.O.D. school system one of the best performing in the nation. All employees deserve to have a voice and deserve to be treated with basic respect. If implemented, these executive orders will create problems, not solve them, and will threaten the stability of the excellent school system our members have helped to build.”
Follow the conversation at #RedForEd and #RedforFed
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