sa国际传媒

A coalition of organizations, including unions like the AFL-CIO and nonprofits like the nonpartisan legal volunteering network We the Action, has teamed up to connect the thousands of federal employees fired under the Trump Administration with free legal support, calling on lawyers across the U.S. to join their efforts.

The coalition is encouraging lawyers to sign up for the effort called Rise Up: Federal Workers Legal Defense Network to help the workers who lost their jobs amid President Donald Trump's quest to shrink the federal government. They launched the network Wednesday and are prepared to offer free training to  attorneys without backgrounds in federal labor or employment law.

"The network has built out resources for lawyers to make it easy for them to participate in this," said Anna Chu, executive director of We the Action, to Law360 Pulse on Wednesday.

The initiative includes organizations like Democracy Forward, which has been a part of numerous lawsuits challenging the Trump administration's actions, and legal advocacy networks like the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the American Constitution Society.

It also includes several unions, such as the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Federation of Federal Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union.

"About February or so, the AFL-CIO pulled together a large table of organizations who had been thinking about this issue," Chu said. "That's how we got invited to the table."

In a statement, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler called the network "a critical tool empowering federal workers to fight back."

"Attacks on federal workers are attacks on all workers and on the essential services that our communities rely on daily," she said. "Getting these workers the justice they deserve in the face of this onslaught will take all of us."

The network seeks to provide individualized support as lawsuits against mass firings yield mixed results. Earlier this month, for instance, the U.S. Supreme Court paused a California federal court order reinstating tens of thousands of fired probationary federal workers from six agencies. The American Federation of Government Employees was among those representing the unions, nonprofits and advocacy groups in that case.

"While there are these larger litigation efforts going on, we're still seeing tens of thousands of workers who may not be covered by them," Chu said. "We believe that these workers have a right to counsel. They have an urgent need for legal support."

--Additional reporting by Katie Buehler. Editing by Andrew Cohen.