In late October, a group of staffers at Yosemite National Park stopped by a maintenance building within the park to visit some of their coworkers. They brought stir-fried chicken thighs, pumpkin soup, and home-made pumpkin spice muffins. This was a few days after they had delivered lasagna to Yosemite’s law enforcement building, and chicken masala to maintenance staff.
An NPS worker, who we will call Robert, told Outside that the recipients of the hot meals were surprised and grateful. While many of Yosemite’s employees have been furloughed amid the federal shutdown, some jobs like law enforcement and maintenance staff are having to work their usual shifts—even though they have not been paid for two pay periods.
“The food isn’t putting money into anyone’s account, but it’s a way to keep morale up and let people know we are in it together,” Robert told Outside.
The food, Robert said, was paid for by the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), a major labor union that represents government workers across multiple branches. Earlier this year, NPS workers at both Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks voted to join the union. Now, NFFE is helping those workers get hot meals. The union is also informing workers about when they might get paid and how to preserve their employment rights, even as the White House declares its intention to fire more park service workers.
Throughout September and October, Outside spoke to five sources at the National Park Service (NPS) about unionization efforts within the agency. Outside granted these sources anonymity, as the NPS has forbidden its employees from speaking directly to journalists.
Outside also reached out to the National Park Service for comment on the unionization efforts at some parks. We received a bounceback from the main NPS media page: “Due to the lapse in appropriations, I am out of the office and not authorized to work during this time. I will respond to your messages when I return.”
When Robert and the more than 600 workers at three California NPS sites voted to unionize in August, they joined thousands of other federal workers being represented by some nine separate unions. Now, more than 40 different NPS units—ranging from Saguaro National Park in Arizona, to the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, to Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania—are unionized. Union reps told Outside that as many as 100 other national park units are preparing to follow their lead.
This labor movement is being put to the test by the Trump administration’s cuts and rollbacks. Even before the government shutdown thinned the ranks of working national park staff, the White House had bled the park service of a quarter of its staff through layoffs and buyouts. The administration has also canceled the collective bargaining agreements that unions had forged with multiple federal agencies. It’s an assault on organized labor that legal scholars call unprecedented, and will put the unions’ organizing efforts to the true test.
The post Can Labor Unions Save the National Park Service? appeared first on Outside Online.
