"Republicans, before the Donald Trump cult took hold, frequently railed (rightly so) against communist and fascist regimes that nationalized industry, indulged in crony capitalism, and substituted propaganda for the free flow of reliable information. Well, well. How times have changed"

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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