Education Department Targets Pregnant, LGBTQ Staff ProtectionsLink to Full ArticleBloomberg News - Josh Eidelson
May 28, 2025 at 1:32 PM MDT
The US Department of Education is pushing to strip workplace protections for pregnant or LGBTQ staff, telling its employee union the policies must be changed to conform to President Donald Trump's executive order on "defending women from gender ideology extremism."
In a May 9 email viewed by Bloomberg News, the agency invited the union to negotiate over "required changes" to the rules and shared a spreadsheet listing dozens of specific union contract provisions and human resources policies targeted for revisions.
It proposed that the word "pregnancy" be removed from several clauses, including one specifying types of discrimination that are prohibited in granting promotions.
The entry on the agency's anti-harassment policy called for removing a reference to "sexual orientation, gender identity, or pregnancy."
The Education Department's union, a chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees, rejected the agency's efforts to change its contract, ... "The agency does not have the legal authority to reopen, modify, revise, alter, and/or change" the contract, local AFGE president Sheria Smith wrote. ... "The executive order does not trump our contract, and they know that," Smith said.----------------------------------
