The EPA’s largest employee unions want a new kind of environmental protection: a contract that insulates agency science from political interference after enduring four years of attacks under former president Donald Trump.
“We are looking to be the first union in the nation to have a scientific integrity article in our contract,” Nicole Cantello, an EPA lawyer and union leader, told BuzzFeed News.
The American Federation of Government Employees Council 238 is a collection of 14 local unions representing 7,500 scientists, engineers, and other employees at the leading federal agency responsible for protecting the environment and human health. The union collective plans to introduce the package, which is still being finalized, at a bargaining session with management in June.
Union leaders say they want to protect workers from the type of attacks they experienced on their jobs during the Trump administration, from political interference to censorship.
Trump’s first EPA chief Scott Pruitt, who resigned amid a series of ethics scandals, questioned climate science, oversaw the takedown of the agency’s climate website, illegally overhauled the agency’s key outside advisory group, the Science Advisory Board, and encouraged oil executives to apply for top agency jobs. Under Pruitt, and then his successor, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, dozens of regulations protecting waterways and limiting the pollution of cars and trucks, coal-fired power plants, and more were weakened or axed entirely. By the end of Trump’s four-year term, EPA staffing levels were low and staff morale was even lower.
