American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE)

Over recent years, AFGE has faced a string of controversies, including having dozens of its officers convicted of corruption charges. ⁵

In 2025, AFGE was among several unions derecognized by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting collective bargaining at agencies deemed critical to national security. AFGE argued that the move is illegal and retaliatory, pointing to prior disputes with the administration over layoffs. Legal challenges to the derecognition are ongoing as of 2026 following an August 2025 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that permitted agencies to proceed while litigation continues. ⁶ As of July 2026, AFGE had solely or jointly filed over a dozen lawsuits against the second Trump administration for its labor policies and executive orders. ^{7 8}

History

The American Federation of Government Employees was founded in 1932 in response to cuts in federal civil service pay and benefits initiated during the Great Depression. Chapters spread throughout the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, and after World War II, AFGE attained a pay raise of nearly 16 percent, which, at the time, was the largest pay raise in the federal workforce’s history. The union also claims credit for winning several new benefits for federal workers, including “within-grade pay increases, transportation allowances, and payment for accrued annual leave, overtime, and night and holiday work.” ^{9 10}

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988, which gave federal worker unions the power to collectively bargain. The AFGE claims credit for obtaining this victory “after decades of AFGE activism.” ^{9 10}

Organizational Overview

The American Federation of Government Employees is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and represents employees in every federal agency as well as employees of the District of Columbia Government. AFGE has particular concentration in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Social Security Administration (SSA), the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and its membership includes border patrol agents, police officers, lawyers, nurses, and other occupations.  ^{11 12 12}

As of 2026, the union reportedly represented 700,000 workers, including around 320,000 dues-paying members. (By law, federal employees subject to a collective bargaining agreement are not required to be union members or pay dues to a labor union.) These numbers include around 18,000 retired members.  ^{12 13 14}

AFGE has nearly 400 employees and boasts over 1,000 local chapters and 12 district offices throughout the United States, predominantly on the East Coast and in the Midwest. These district offices each have their own vice presidents who sit on the National Executive Council along with the national president and the national vice president for women and fair practices.  ^{13 12 15 12 16}

From its founding in 1932, AFGE has been nationally affiliated with the AFL-CIO or its predecessor labor federations. AFGE made a historically rare move and voted in 1997 for every single one of its 1,100 local chapters to affiliate with the state federations of the AFL-CIO, bringing every part of AFGE firmly in line with the international union. AFGE won a big victory in 1962 when then-President John Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988, which allowed federal employees to collectively bargain with federal departments.  ^{2 2 17}

AFGE is a member of the National Committee on Pay Equity, a left-of-center coalition of women’s and civil rights organizations, labor unions, and professional and legal associations that aim to close the alleged gender pay gap. ¹⁸

Activities

The American Federation of Government Employees national headquarters spent over $94 million in 2016 (not including funds collected and transmitted to affiliates), including spending over $30 million on representational activities, over $11 million on political activities and lobbying, and spending over $24 million on overhead and union administration. The union disbursed roughly $3 million to its officers and $33.6 million to union employees.  ^{19 20}

AFGE negotiates dozens of contracts each year with the federal government, predominantly through regional and local branches of federal agencies like the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. ²¹

In the 2016 election cycle, AFGE-associated political committees and AFGE employees contributed around $1.3 million to Democrats and around $102,000 to Republicans. During that election cycle, AFGE endorsed former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president over her opponent in the Democratic Party presidential primary, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who actively competed for union endorsements.  ^{22 23}

From 1998 through 2016, AFGE and its affiliates spent over $24.5 million lobbying at the federal level. ²⁴

Outside of lobbying members of the U.S. Congress on behalf of their membership, ¹⁴ as of 2026 AFGE was engaged in a variety of campaigns to “fight the [Trump] Administration’s privatization agenda and assault on the rights of federal employees.” ²⁵

This included providing phone scripts for its members to call U.S. Senators and Representatives to advocate for hiring more employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA), paid parental leave legislation, federal pay raises, and “official time,” whereby union members are paid by their government employer (namely the taxpayer) even while working full time for their union. ²⁵

In June 2025, AFGE participated in organizing or supporting protests branded under the “No Kings” banner, a national day of demonstrations positioned as a defense of democratic norms against President Donald Trump. These events were part of a larger mobilization across at least 19 U.S. states and multiple international locations, according to publicly available event listings on Mobilize.us, a Democratic Party-aligned organizing platform. ^{26 27}

AFGE Strong

In 2025, AFGE launched AFGE Strong (also known as “We Are AFGE Strong”) in response to the labor policies and executive orders of the second Trump administration, which AFGE described as “unlawful actions,” including “seeking to shut down congressionally mandated agencies, fire and displace federal workers, outlaw their unions, and gut merit systems protections.” AFGE Strong contains subgroups to support AFGE members working at specific federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. ^{7 8}

AFGE Strong encourages AFGE members to post content on social media promoting AFGE or the alleged value of federal workers. For instance, AFGE Strong provides material to post to dispel “telework myths,” such as the notion that a substantial portion of the federal workforce works from home. ^{7 28}

As of March 2026, AFGE filed more than a dozen lawsuits against the Trump administration. In February 2026, AFGE filed a lawsuit challenging Executive Order 14171, which converted tens of thousands of federal employees to at-will employees with fewer job protections than other civil servants. ⁸

In mid-2025, AFGE led a coalition of unions to file a lawsuit to challenge Executive Order 14210, which directed numerous federal agencies to cut their staffs. In July, a federal court ruled no decision on the EO but ordered layoffs to cease until the courts could fully consider the order’s legality. ⁸

In March 2025, AFGE and numerous other unions filed a lawsuit challenging Executive Order 14251, which eliminated collective bargaining authority over 950,000 federal employees by designating their work as “intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.” ⁸

In February 2025, AFGE sued the federal government after then-U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem cancelled the collective bargaining agreement between AFGE and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which affected the labor contracts of 47,000 federal employees, on the grounds of national security concerns. AFGE claimed the cancellation violated the First and Fifth Amendments. Similarly, in November 2025, AFGE filed a suit after the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs unilaterally cancelled the department’s collective bargaining agreement with 300,000 employees represented by AFGE, but maintained the collective bargaining agreement with federal employees represented by seven other unions. ⁸

AFGE Strong maintains an AFGE Federal Employee Defense Fund to help finance its lawsuits against the Trump administration. ²⁹

Constituency Groups

In June 2021, AFGE organized AFGE B.L.A.C.K. (Black Leaders Advancing Change and Knowledge), which claims to promote union issues that help its Black members. ^{30 31}

AFGE’s AFGE A.P.O.W.E.R. (Asian Pacific Organized Workers Empowering Representation) claims to promote union issues that help its Asian members by supporting the union’s Women’s and Fair Practices Departments. ³²

AFGE PRIDE claims to promote issues that help LGBT union members. AFGE PRIDE alleges that there is “homophobia and transphobia in the ranks of management and labor leadership” which has led to LGBT union members receiving inferior benefits to non-LGBT union members. ³³

2025 Layoff

In April 2025, the American Federation of Government Employees announced its intention to lay off more than half of its national staff, from 350 to 155, due to federal layoffs initiated by the second Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and the expected financial shortfalls for the union. AFGE president Everett Kelley acknowledged that the cuts would likely hinder the union’s ability to provide services to its members. ^{34 35}

Controversies

Criminal Corruption

The American Federation of Government Employees has been described as the most corrupt union in America, often leading all other unions in criminal misconduct investigated by the U.S. Department of Labor. ⁵

In the first eight months of 2017 alone, 11 AFGE officials pled guilty to or were convicted of corruption offences, vastly outpacing the postal unions with six convictions and the National Federation of Federal Employees with one conviction. In 2017, 60 percent of the criminal corruption offenses of federal sector unions reported on the Labor Department’s Criminal Enforcement webpage were committed by AFGE, as of the beginning of August 2017. ⁵

The numbers were similarly poor in the years previous. AFGE officials were convicted of corruption or pled guilty 10 times in 2016 and nine in 2015. AFGE officials have pled guilty alone to crimes 135 times since 2001. ^{5 36}

Over the course of about two years from mid-2015 to 2017, three AFGE officials embezzled money from the union. Jeffery Davis, former President of AFGE Local 183, embezzled $92,000; Violet Lamorie, former Secretary Treasurer of AFGE Local 695, embezzled over $70,000; and William Davis, former President of AFGE Local 1119, embezzled around $150,000. Seven AFGE officers were charged with wire fraud, two for bank fraud, and five for false statements or writing, among many other crimes. ⁵

In May 2025, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont secured a sentence against Leticia Russi-Shareno, the president of Local 2076 of AFGE, to three years’ probation and to pay $36,000 in restitution after being charged with wire fraud related to embezzlement. Russi-Shareno was found to have used her position to transfer $36,000 from the union’s accounts to her own personal bank account and expenditures. ³⁷

Official Time

AFGE found itself at the center of a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs scandal that came to light in 2014 wherein dozens of veterans died waiting for care while thousands more endured multi-month long wait times for service — wait times that VA employees allegedly covered up.  Subsequent investigations found excessive wait times and poor conditions at VA facilities across the United States. ^{38 38}

Reports revealed that employees across the scandal-plagued VA system were working full time for AFGE under a practice known as “official time,” including four employees in Baltimore, Maryland, one in Wilmington, Delaware, three in Tucson, Arizona, and one in Massachusetts. AFGE union members in the VA were also accused of using official time to compile a “management hit list” allegedly at the request of VA Secretary Bob McDonald. The list contained nearly three dozen VA managers the union members wanted to have removed from the agency.  ^{38 39 39}

Even at a time when AFGE officials were being paid full government salaries from the VA while working for the union, then-AFGE president Cox claimed the main problem at the VA was understaffing. Cox later said at an AFGE rally in Washington, D.C., that if he meets “one more politician who tells me we need to tighten our belts, I’m going to take my belt off and I’m going to whoop his ass.”  ^{38 40}

AFGE subsequently resisted any reforms that would allow veterans to access non-VA health care when faced with unacceptable wait times at the VA, with Cox claiming that “such a move could jeopardize the quality of patient care.” ³⁸

AFGE has publicly defended official time, claiming without evidence that official time is used to “enhance working conditions,” “[improve] workplace safety,” and “protect employees from discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and other factors.” The union added that official time “saves taxpayer money by helping resolve workplace conflicts as early as possible.”  ^{41 41}

The Competitive Enterprise Institute found not only that five AFGE officials found guilty or indicted for criminal activity were on official time, but also that the use of official time across the federal government comes at a great cost to taxpayers. In FY 2012 alone, for example, official time cost over $157 million as federal employees spent nearly 3.5 million hours working for their unions.  ^{42 42}

VA Accountability Act

In early 2018, AFGE expressed opposition to the VA Accountability Act, a law reforming civil service practices in the Department of Veterans Affairs. J. David Cox Sr., then-national president of AFGE, worried that the act “makes it easier for the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire employees accused of misconduct.” ⁴³

Alleged Cover-Ups

In 2017, AFGE’s national executive council almost unanimously decided to remove then-secretary-treasurer Eugene Hudson Jr. after he was “found guilty on the basis of internal charges in connection with his use of AFGE staff and email for campaign or personal purposes.” Hudson claimed that he was “removed for political reasons” in retaliation for investigating abuses of the union’s expense accounts by senior leadership as well as for his plans to run against Cox. Hudson claimed to be targeted because he was an “outspoken critic of how then-AFGE President J. David Cox and other members of the NEC have spent AFGE money for personal use, including family vacations to the Virgin Islands.”  ^{44 44 44}

Since his removal from AFGE, Hudson challenged the dismissal from the organization in a federal district court, which ordered AFGE to reinstate Hudson near the end of 2017. AFGE challenged that court’s decision and won, allowing the union to remove Hudson from office again. The legal battle may not be finished because “Hudson’s lawsuit against his ouster still has remaining counts the court must decide.” ⁴⁵

Near the end of 2018, then-president J. David Cox Sr. “dismissed four elected officials of the union’s Department of Labor unit.” The dismissal was a result of “allegations of improper expenditures and failure to honor the votes of members.” An $18,000 event at the Hyatt Regency is one of the alleged expenditures being called into question. However, the deposed officials questioned the procedures that Cox followed to remove them as well as the possible motive behind removing Alex Bastani, who was rumored to be considering a second run for national union office. ^{46 47}

2025 Government Shutdown

In October 2025, AFGE national president Everett Kennedy wrote a publication on the group’s website backing Republican legislation in Congress to end the ongoing 2025 U.S government shutdown which started on October 1st, 2025. In his publication, he argued, “it’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today. No half measures, and no gamesmanship. Put every single federal worker back on the job with full back pay — today.” ⁴⁸

The publication continued, “Work together on a bipartisan basis to address important policy matters like addressing rising costs and fixing the broken appropriations process…[n]one of these steps favor one political side over another. They favor the American people – who expect stability from their government and responsibility from their leaders.” ⁴⁸

The decision drew backlash from rank-and-file members, who released an open letter opposing the leadership’s stance and accusing national officers of failing to place responsibility on Republicans, who controlled the Senate rules and could reopen the government unilaterally by overriding the Senate’s supermajority “filibuster” rules. Critics also claimed that AFGE had declined to establish clear negotiation red lines or mount strong pressure campaigns during the shutdown. ⁴⁹

Leadership

Everett Kelley was the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees as of 2025. Beginning his first term in 2020, he was subsequently reelected in 2022 and later in 2024. Working as a member of the AFGE since 1981, he also served as a member of the Anniston Army Depot. Prior to his national presidency, Kelley was previously the president of AFGE Local 1945 from 2002 to 2011, was elected the national vice president of AFGE District 5 in 2011, and was later elected as the AFGE’s national secretary-treasurer in 2018 before being elected national president in 2020. In 2022, he was appointed by then-President Joe Biden to serve on the Federal Salary Council. ⁵⁰