By Arnie Alpert, Active with the Activists
Arnie Alpert spent decades as a community organizer/educator in NH movements for social justice and peace. Officially retired since 2020, he keeps his hands (and feet) in the activist world while writing about past and present social movements.
CONCORD—When Dave Boucher, a Transportation Safety Officer at Manchester Airport since 2002, received the first Office of Personnel Management memo telling him to produce a list of five accomplishments within about 48 hours, he considered the order badly thought out. For one thing, TSOs who were on vacation or other leave wouldn’t even get the memo until they returned.
For another, TSOs don’t have government-issued smart phones or computers. Their department head told them they could get overtime pay if they needed to go to their workplace in order to respond by the deadline. Not exactly government efficiency.
And as for his five accomplishments, Boucher pointed out, “Everyone knows what TSOs do.”
In addition to working the TSA line at the airport, Boucher is president of Local 2617 of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which is included in a 7-year collective bargaining agreement signed last year with the Department of Homeland Security. He says his members are unsettled by the “drop of a hat” changes being ordered by the government under the direction of Elon Musk. Threats to fire workers on the spot would violate the contract provisions on progressive discipline, he said. He’s proud that the union has filed lawsuits against actions led by Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.
Liz Harkins, president of AFGE Local 2604 was even more pointed. Her union represents employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Among the provisions of her union’s contact is a “harassment prevention policy,” which she says is being violated by threats and precipitous layoffs. Mistreatment by Trump administration officials is causing severe mental stress in the workforce, many of whose members are veterans of the armed forces.
Boucher and Harkins were in the crowd at a “Stand Up for Federal Workers” demonstration outside the James Cleveland Federal Building in Concord on Friday morning. With a fierce wind blowing, about 100 people, many of them union members, stood for an hour displaying signs expressing their support for federal workers and the services they provide.
Like other recent demonstrations organized by informal groups, this one was called by a few friends and spread by word-of-mouth and social media. In addition to the AFGE, union groups represented included the NH AFL-CIO, NEA, Teamsters, Carpenters, Letter Carriers, News Guild, and Postal Workers. At least two State Representatives were present, as were clergy and lay activists from the NH Faith and Labor Alliance. Other members of the public came to stand up for federal workers and express their anger at the mistreatment of public servants.
Dismissals of federal workers, starting primarily with probationary employees, began soon after President Trump established DOGE by executive order on his first day back in the White House. As of March 5, the agency claimed to have saved $105 billion through asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.
Workforce reductions have come so fast that it’s hard to keep track. By CNN’s tally, “at least 101,022 workers have been fired from federal agencies so far.” The Veterans Administration plans to eliminate another 80,000 jobs, the AP reported two days ago.
The AFGE, the largest union representing federal workers, has filed lawsuits challenging layoffs as well as appealing orders which will politicize the civil service, cut funding approved by Congress, and give DOGE access to private information. A federal judge ruled on February 27 that the firings of probationary employees had been illegal because the Office of Personnel Management lacked authority to dismiss workers in other federal agencies.
Additional lawsuits have been filed by the National Treasury Workers Union, which represents federal workers in a range of agencies and offices.
Mike Amaral, a retired US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, was outside the federal building with a sign that said, “Balance the budget by taxing millionaires, not by firing our federal workers.” He’s worried about the whole federal workforce, but especially about his son and daughter-in-law, both environmental scientists working in Alaska. They still have their jobs, he said, but they don’t know what’s coming next, and “as a young couple with a five-month-old baby, their jobs, their ability to pay their mortgage, and their healthcare are all on the line.”
Steve Shurtleff, a retired federal marshal, said it was tough being a federal worker during the Nixon administration, but nothing like what’s going on now. Shurtleff, who’s long been involved in Democratic politics, acknowledged that a lot of people voted for Trump, but commented, “I think they were looking for something else. This isn’t what they were planning.”
At a demonstration earlier in the week, I caught up with, Chrisinda Lynch, who told me her husband used to work full-time for a USDA agency and still does contract work. They drove from Concord to the White Mountain National Forest last week to support laid-off employees. “What’s going to happen with the White Mountain National Forest this summer, when people want to come and camp?” she asked. “Pretty much anything you can think of that involves government service has been affected.”
Workers inside were paying attention, according to April Richer, a union activist serving as interfaith organizer with the American Friends Service Committee. While she was passing out signs, a federal worker came out of the building and approached her. “They were looking out the window, saw us standing here, and wanted to thank us for being here,” Richer said. “They really appreciate the support and the solidarity.”
It was too cold and windy to have a long program outside on Friday, but several people picked up a megaphone and shared a few words. Tim Roberts, president of the NH Letter Carriers Union, alerted the crowd to a Trump executive order aiming to restructure the US Postal Service and transfer it to the Department of Commerce. “The reason he’s doing this,” Roberts warned, “is he wants to try to privatize the post office.” The Letter Carriers are planning their own rally on March 23.
Dave Boucher from the TSA union joked about asking people to remove their shoes, but then got serious. “How do you want to treat your government employees?” he asked. “How do you want to treat your brother or your sister or your daughter that works for the federal government? Treat them like you would want to be treated. That’s all we ask. You go into work one day and they say, ‘Hey, guess what? You’re fired.’ That’s not the way it should be done.”
Liz Harkins, the union leader from the Department of Veterans Affairs, spoke up, too. Calling the actions of the Trump-Musk administration bullying and harassment fueled by misogyny, she asked everyone to stick together. Looking out over the crowd of freezing protesters, she said, “I think it’s great to see people start to stand together and stand together in unity. Doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. This is going to affect everybody here. It’s not going to affect just the Democrats or just the liberals or just the Republicans. This is going to affect everybody in America, because everybody’s connected together.”
Glenn Brackett, president of the NH AFL-CIO, delivered a similar message and pledged this would not be the last pro-worker rally. “When we do this again, and we are going to do again,” he said, “everybody here has got to bring somebody with them. And the next one, we’re going to bring some more, and eventually they’re going to have to pay attention, because we are the people. This is our country. It’s not theirs. It’s our freaking country. We’ve got to take it back.”
It won’t be easy. Immediately after the rally, Dave Boucher learned that the Department of Homeland Security had just announced it was ending collective bargaining with TSA workers, seemingly voiding a legally binding contract. The DHS took a particularly condescending stance toward Boucher’s union saying, “The Transportation Security officers are losing their hard-earned dollars to a union that did not represent or protect their interests.”
The national AFGE responded quickly with its own statement. “They gave as a justification a completely fabricated claim about union officials – making clear this action has nothing to do with efficiency, safety, or homeland security. This is merely a pretext for attacking the rights of regular working Americans across the country because they happen to belong to a union,” said AFGE president Everett Kelly.
In response to a question about the likelihood of yet another lawsuit, a union representative said, “We do not believe they have done this in an appropriate and legal manner. We are evaluating our legal options and will aggressively pursue every possible avenue to defend our members and the safety of the traveling public against this un-American union busting and retaliation.”