Hundreds of staff at California national parks to unionize amid Trump turmoil | California
Hundreds of staff members of two of the most popular national parks of California have voted to unionize, a decision that occurs for a disturbed summer for the National Park Service, which saw the Trump administration adopt unprecedented staff and budget cuts.
During an election held between July and August, more than 97% of the workers of Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks voted for the organization of a union, according to a statement from the National Federation of Federal Employees. The Federal Labor Relations Authority certified the results last week.
“I am honored to welcome interpretation guards, scientists, biologists, photographers, geographers and so many other federal employees in essential roles in Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon to our union,” said Randy Erwin, National President of NFFE.
“By unionizing, hundreds of previously not represented employees have obtained a critical voice at their workplace and now have the power to make important modifications to the benefit themselves and their colleagues.”
Voting means that 600 parks workers, including park guards, researchers, educators, fees of expenses and the first stakeholders, will be represented, among other things, by the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE).
Labor organizers have been trying to form a union in the parks for years, but have not had the necessary support before this year when the mass layoffs of the Trump administration have left the parks in the turmoil, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“It is not surprising that the workers of the National Park Service are extremely favorable to unionization, because federal employees across the country have faced reductions of strength, threats to the workplace protections and reduced agency budgets under this administration,” said Erwin.
Since Trump took office this year, the National Park Service, which manages 85 million acres (34 million hectares) of American public land, has lost a quarter of its permanent staff, seasonal hiring is down and the administration is looking to reduce more than $ 1 billion in the NPS budget.
Interior secretary, Doug Burgum, said the cuts “cleaned the barn”. Despite the upheaval, the federal government ordered the parks to stay open to the public. This let the staff rush to manage the parks in the middle of the tip of the summer season and, as the Guardian reported it last month, archaeologists manage ticket tickets while the fleeting park has cleaned the bathrooms.
In Yosemite, scientists also cleaned public bathrooms because there were no other workers to do so. In the midst of the turmoil this year, NPS employees told Guardian earlier this summer that they had received unsigned emails from the staff management office urging them to resign and find a job in the private sector.
“Every day, you come to work and you have no idea what will happen next. It is as if we were all subject to a psychological warfare,” said a staff member this spring.
Earlier this year in Yosemite, licensed employees hung an American flag upside down, a symbol of distress, to the El Capitan of the park to attract the attention of the cuts.
Erwin with the NFFE said that the union would take “each possible step” to increase staff and resources and defend employees.
