Mr. Trump has attacked workers in other ways. He has
gutted the Department of Labor through cuts by the Department of Government
Efficiency. He is also rolling back Labor Department rules from the Obama and
Biden administrations that allowed home care workers to earn overtime and
farmworkers to campaign for better working conditions. And he has severely
undermined the National Labor Relations Board, which handles thousands of unions' matters every year by firing its head and nominating corporate-friendly figures
to steer its operations away from supporting workers.
Organized labor, for all its talk about solidarity,
remains deeply divided on how best to approach organizing, politics and Mr.
Trump. Certain labor leaders, particularly Sean O’Brien, president of the
Teamsters, have embraced Mr. Trump and his brand of Republicans, particularly
around immigration restrictions. Other unions with memberships that are heavily
white and male also lean toward Republicans. But they still represent a
minority of union members.
In 2024, union workers were among the only demographic
groups where Democrats improved
(https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2024/general-results/voter-analysis) their
standing compared with 2020. Perhaps that reflects efforts by Joe Biden to be,
as he put it
(https://theconversation.com/bidens-labor-report-card-historian-gives-union-joe-a-higher-grade-than-any-president-since-fdr-228771),
“the most pro-union president in American history.”
Unions have the internal support, structure and
organizing capacity to support the fight against Mr. Trump. Yet no one in the
labor movement has taken the public role of countering Mr. O’Brien and making
it clear to the American public that most unions are strongly opposed to Mr.
Trump.
If the labor movement wants to fight for its
survival, it must return to mass mobilization tactics, reminding Americans that
their rights come through working together — not through supporting a president
who talks about helping American workers while slashing worker safety
regulations, supporting tariffs that raise the cost of consumer goods and
stripping workers of their legal rights to contracts.
All this is happening at a time when Americans’ approval of unions is the highest it has been since
the mid-1960s.
One cannot overstate the significance of Mr. Trump’s
attacks on government workers. Public sector work has become organized labor’s
power base, allowing the total workforce’s union membership rate to remain at
around 10 percent, despite less than 6 percent of private sector workers having
unions.
Based on actions Mr. Trump has taken this year — and
without any notable public pushback from supposedly pro-labor Republicans like
Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio — it is unlikely that there will be any unionized
federal workers outside of policing agencies by the end of his term in 2029.
Mr. Trump has attacked workers in other ways. He has
gutted the Department of Labor through cuts by the Department of Government
Efficiency. He is also rolling back Labor Department rules from the Obama and
Biden administrations that allowed home care workers to earn overtime and
farmworkers to campaign for better working conditions. And he has severely
undermined the National Labor Relations Board, which handles thousands of unions' matters every year by firing its head and nominating corporate-friendly figures
to steer its operations away from supporting workers.
Organized labor, for all its talk about solidarity,
remains deeply divided on how best to approach organizing, politics and Mr.
Trump. Certain labor leaders, particularly Sean O’Brien, president of the
Teamsters, have embraced Mr. Trump and his brand of Republicans, particularly
around immigration restrictions. Other unions with memberships that are heavily
white, and male also lean toward Republicans. But they still represent a
minority of union members.
In 2024, union workers were among the only demographic
groups where Democrats improved
(https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2024/general-results/voter-analysis) their
standing compared with 2020. Perhaps that reflects efforts by Joe Biden to be,
as he put it
(https://theconversation.com/bidens-labor-report-card-historian-gives-union-joe-a-higher-grade-than-any-president-since-fdr-228771),
“the most pro-union president in American history.”
Unions have the internal support, structure and
organizing capacity to support the fight against Mr. Trump. Yet no one in the
labor movement has taken the public role of countering Mr. O’Brien and making
it clear to the American public that most unions are strongly opposed to Mr.
Trump…
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