The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which sets the rules for the use of nuclear energy in the US, spent 11% more taxpayer money on union activities over the 12 months ending Sept. 30 than it did five years earlier, new records reveal.
The NRC spent $377,056 in fiscal year 2019 on union time — referring to employee actions like attending labor meetings and union-sponsored training activities, as well as representing employees who face disciplinary action — but those expenses ballooned to $420,074 in fiscal year 2024, according to records obtained by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and shared with The Post.
“Federal employees should be serving the American people, not themselves,” said Ernst, who chairs the Senate DOGE Caucus.
“My investigation into the cost of taxpayer-funded union time at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is just the tip of the iceberg.”
The $420,074 union spending in fiscal year 2024 also marks a jump from fiscal year 2023, when the NRC spent $398,548 on taxpayer-funded union time.
“The fact that one agency racked up more than $800,000 in just two years is exactly why I am working with the Trump administration to get a full accounting across the federal government and end this taxpayer theft,” the Republican added.
The NRC had 38 employees who could claim taxpayer-funded union time in fiscal year 2023, but that number jumped to 45 in 2024.
Back in December, Ernst dished out a slew of requests to various government agencies for data on their taxpayer-funded union time expenses. The NRC was the first of 24 to respond.
Such data from various government entities had last been released in a major 2019 report by the Office of Personnel Management. That report concluded that across the federal government, at least $135 million had been spent on taxpayer-funded union time.
“In many cases, where agency union representatives serve as full-time union officials, agencies are no longer able to rely on employees even for a portion of their duty time, to complete the duties of the positions for which they were hired,” the OPM noted.
Government employees are allowed to engage in collective bargaining under the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute, which became law in 1978.
“Taxpayer-funded union time is a terrible deal for taxpayers,” Rachel Greszler, a senior research fellow on workforce and public finance at the Heritage Foundation, told The Post.
“Not only are they paying public sector employees to abandon the jobs they were hired to perform and instead work for their unions, but when working for their unions, they are often negotiating for things that are directly counter to taxpayers’ interests,” she added. “It’s not only the cost to taxpayers, but also the lack of services provided.”
Greszler noted that “federal employee unions cannot negotiate over pay and benefits” and have a history of haggling over lesser issues like “the height of cubicle panels, securing designated smoking areas on otherwise smoke-free campuses, and the right to wear Spandex at work.”
Last week, Ernst penned a letter calling on the Trump administration to revive OPM tracking and public disclosure of taxpayer-funded union time across the government and previously introduced legislation that would compel government workers to reimburse taxpayers for union time they’ve funded.
NRC employees are represented by the National Treasury Employees Union.
Neither the agency nor the union immediately responded to requests for comment.
The Trump administration has pursued some of the reforms that the Hawkeye State Republican has proposed — such as cracking down on remote work throughout the federal government and underutilized leases for office space.
The Department of Government Efficiency has been spearheading the Trump administration’s efforts to modernize the vast federal bureaucracy.
