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Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

The federal employee unions have incredible power, often to the detriment of the government.

That power comes from the idea that the federal employees can shut down government operations if they stop working. This administration (supposedly) wants dearly to shut down government operations, so the union doesn't have any power.

Federal employees are not allowed to strike

Nobody can stop them

Confidently incorrect. Federal employees marked as "mission critical" cannot strike, but other federal employees can. Unions take this into account and have workers strike on-behalf of mission critical employees.

5 U.S.C. §7311

Federal employees are not permitted to strike. See 5 USC § 7311.

Didn't President Reagan fire almost every air traffic controller in thr 80s? Weren't they unionized as well?

My understanding is that the consequences of that decision is being felt even to this day. I only know about it because of the recent airplane accident

Pretty sure they will just executive order the unions are void, Congress won't do a thing and the courts may get to it in 3 decades.

What good is a lawsuit if He decides to ignore it and not pay? One side of that battle is ultimately backed up by the military.

Which side?

Military members are government employees. I imagine they would be extremely circumspect of being deployed against other government employees who were cheated by a bad-faith deal.

“I’m just following orders” has been a successful moral defense for centuries. I wouldn’t bet on it losing its effectiveness this time.

There is no "they". The military adheres to the law for only as long as those laws are enforced. If the US military can commit war crimes abroad and be protected from outside prosecution, there is nothing stopping them from doing the same inside the US. All it takes is for one person in charge to ignore charges in a military court, or simply not comply with a legal summons in civilian court.

Look at how the US treats the International Criminal Court today, a legal body it itself helped create after WWII. Not a huge leap to think they will ignore state courts in the US. Who's going to arrest them?

> I imagine they would be extremely circumspect of being deployed against other government employees who were cheated by a bad-faith deal

Why would they be?

Because the paychecks come from the same place. If your boss publicly cheated your coworker and then sent the mob to break his kneecaps for protesting, wouldn't that concern you? For purely selfish reasons if nothing else.

I doubt that kind of characterization would be accepted. My expectation is that there would be some reasoning used to justify withholding the funds.

That rides on the assumption that there's considerable sympathy for them solely for the reason of checks coming from the same source.

Having spent most of my life surrounded by military dudes, they support other military dudes. But they very much do not support anybody in DC.

Like I said, at this point I'm not convinced they have any leverage.

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