On March 27, President Trump declared that a million federal workers would lose their collective bargaining rights. He claimed that the targeted workers are ineligible for union representation because their work involves national security. But the order extends far beyond that sector and includes workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Treasury and many more departments and agencies.
The administration followed up the executive order with lawsuits that would cancel existing collective bargaining contracts between the federal government and its workers. And then, without notification to the unions, the government payroll agencies stopped collecting union dues. Many workers also found that their union-supplied supplementary vision and dental insurance plans had also been cancelled. Now, after a month of severely reduced dues payments, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest union of federal workers, is laying off more than half of its staff.
It’s clear that these changes are at least partially retaliation for the rhetoric and lawsuits of several federal unions that are positioning themselves in opposition to Trump. Administration spokespeople originally explained the order by saying that unions “have declared war on President Trump’s agenda.” What’s more, the order has been amended to exclude small unions that are friendlier to Trump.
But this is not just a petty fight between Donald Trump and certain vocal union presidents. These attacks are part of a broader war on the working class and our rights. The government has fired tens of thousands of federal workers and threateningly encouraged most others to quit. In March, the administration reduced the minimum wage for federal contractors from $17.75 to $13.30. Trump also fired the chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which administers union protections for private sector workers. This leaves the NLRB without a quorum and unable to issue decisions. A judge ruled that the firing was illegal, but the Supreme Court has blocked the reinstatement of the former chair.
Trump is setting an example for the local and state governments, along with the billionaire bosses of the private sector. He’s showing them the way forward for more brutal attacks on the working class. At the same time, by eliminating the NLRB’s decision-making power, he has effectively removed any consequences for companies that break labor law.
The working class’s response to these attacks should include demands to bring back the regulations and rights granted to us by labor relations laws, but it should not stop there. We have to remember what caused the NLRB to be established in the first place. In 1934 and 1935 the United States was in the midst of a tremendous wave of militant worker action. Workers walked off the job at every West Coast port in May 1934. In San Francisco, workers in many sectors across the city joined the fight and declared a general strike on July 16. That same year, a nearly yearlong struggle by the truck drivers of Minneapolis also spread across the city into a general strike, an all-out fight by the working class against oppression by the government and the bosses. And in Toledo, Ohio, auto workers fought with the national guard in the streets of the city. Workers were fighting with all their collective force, and they were winning! Desperately trying to reestablish some stability in the capitalist order, President Roosevelt was forced to sign the Wagner Act, giving workers the legal right to negotiate collectively with their bosses and creating the NLRB, and to legally enshrine other concessions to the workers of the U.S.
We’ve seen the types of fights that workers are capable of mounting when we are organized and ready to stand up for ourselves and each other. We see a potential glimpse of some of that organization today, with the growth of groups like the Federal Unionist Network. It’s too early to know what federal workers’ fight-back against Trump might look like or can accomplish. But we know that to be successful, it must go much farther than lawsuits pursued by official union apparatuses.
