The Trump administration’s losses keep piling up in grievance cases over its return to office and telework policies for union employees. The latest loss came earlier this week when an arbitrator ruled that the Agriculture Department violated its collective bargaining agreement and committed unfair labor practices when it ended its telework and mandated Rural Development Agency employees represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) return to the office without negotiating the terms first. Margaret Donaghy, the arbitrator in this case, found USDA “committed unfair labor practices (ULPs) when it engaged in bad faith bargaining and implemented a rule that conflicted with the existing agreement. The nature and scope of the agency’s breaches amounted to a repudiation of the agreement.” The agency changed the remote work and telework agreements for 135 employees, 46 of which required remote work as a condition of employment. “The arbitrator points out in this new decision that nothing the agency argued hasn’t already been argued in other cases and none of it was convincing. The arbitrator is aligning with same opinions from earlier cases,” Summerlin said. “That fact is very illuminating because it seems like a dozen different arbitrators have come to same decision on these cases. Everyone who has a neutral eye and any background in federal labor law could look at this process and say this is wrong and the administration screwed this up from the beginning. It doesn’t matter what agency, the marching orders the agencies received were the same from the administration.” The administration has come out on top in at least three other cases, including one case that became public today, which is related to a grievance filed by the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3313, whose members work for the Transportation Department’s Federal Motor