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Unions representing federal employees have sued the U.S. Social Security Administration in Manhattan federal court, accusing the agency of using labor negotiations to "circumvent" a court order that blocked Trump administration restrictions on collective bargaining from taking effect.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, attorneys for local chapters of the American Federation of Government Employees said the SSA had attempted to repackage executive orders targeting federal workers and their unions as contract proposals last year, after a federal judge in the District of Columbia had struck down their key provisions.

The executive orders, issued in May 2018, aimed in part to evict unions from offices on SSA property and reduce the amount of work time representatives could devote to union business, making it harder for unions to bargain on behalf of their members, the suit said. A federal appeals court earlier this year reversed the district court's injunction on jurisdictional grounds, but did not rule on the merits of the claims.

The Trump administration has argued the changes would make government more efficient and make it easier to remove employees who performed poorly.

According to the lawsuit, Margaret Weichert, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, last November published a memorandum encouraging all federal agencies to convert the terms of the executive orders to contract proposals, which AFGE opposed in collective bargaining talks with representatives from the SSA.

In January, the SSA claimed in a filing with the Federal Service Impasses Panel that the sides were deadlocked in negotiations, an assertion that the unions rejected. According to the plaintiffs, there was no true impasse in negotiations, and the SSA "was instead attempting to circumvent the district court decision by re-imposing the provisions of defendant Trump's executive orders repackaged in the form of contract proposals."

The panel later ruled in favor of the SSA, implementing some of the toughest restrictions, including prohibiting union use of government space, limiting the use of official time for union representatives and extending the length of the new collective bargaining agreement to a term of seven years.

In the lawsuit, the unions argued that they would be irreparably harmed if the contractual provisions were allowed to stand.

"This order will severely restrict the ability of the plaintiffs' members to act as union representatives of SSA employees and will impair the plaintiffs' ability to carry out their responsibility to ensure that employees are treated in accordance with applicable law, regulations and collective bargaining agreements," attorneys from Cohen, Weiss and Simon and Osborne Law Offices wrote in the 26-page filing.

The suit, which also names Trump and the SSA as defendants, seeks declaratory and injunctive relief declaring the executive orders beyond the power of the president and blocking the SSA from implementing the panel's decision.

The case, which has been assigned to U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels of the Southern District of New York, is captioned Plaintiffs American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3369 v. Trump.

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