Al-Monitor reports that “federal employees across nearly two dozen agencies plan to walk off the job Tuesday to protest the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza war.” They have organized a group called “Feds United for Peace” and are coordinating the walkout to occur on the 100th day since Israel began its operations in Gaza. “One of the walkout organizers said that rather than quit, they felt ‘a moral obligation and a patriotic duty’ to influence change from inside,” the story says.
5 U.S.C. § 7311 makes it illegal for federal workers to go on strike: “An individual may not accept or hold a position in the Government of the United States . . . if he . . . participates in a strike, or asserts the right to strike, against the Government of the United States.”
18 U.S.C. § 1918 proscribes the penalty: “Whoever violates the provision of section 7311 . . . shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year and a day, or both.”
Cornell Law’s dictionary defines a strike as “an organized and intentional stoppage or slowdown of work by employees, intending to make the employer comply with the demands of the employees.” The planned walkout is organized and intentional. It will slow down work. And it is carried out by employees who intend to make their employer, the federal government, comply with their demands about government policies regarding Gaza and Israel.
If federal workers object to the federal government’s policies, they can resign whenever they want. As the Al-Monitor story notes, some federal workers have already done so over the government’s policies regarding Gaza and Israel. That’s their right. It is not their right to walk out in protest. That’s a felony.