Campaigning for president, Donald Trump assured staff that he would combat for them. “You’re going to have the American Dream again,” he stated at his marketing campaign rallies. “We’re going to be within the golden age.” His spokesperson now boasts that below Trump, staff already get pleasure from “elevated job alternatives, higher wages, and extra bargaining energy.” Trump guarantees his tariffs will produce a renaissance of American manufacturing. Hs unpopular Republican funds invoice—which slashes Medicaid and well being care to fund tax breaks for the wealthy—is peddled as offering “working household tax cuts.”
Buried beneath the day by day barrage of bluster is a scientific, multifront battle on staff and their unions. Trump brandished his true colours when he paraded billionaires round him for his inauguration. Each Trump and the Republican social gathering stay wedded to the trickle-down shibboleths of the manager suite: tax breaks for the wealthy and companies, deregulation, and rigging the system in opposition to working individuals.
Forward of Labor Day weekend, as Trump as soon as extra masquerades as a champion of staff, it’s price summarizing how intensive this assault has been in his first months in workplace.
Trump targeted federal workers from the beginning, scorning them as “crooked and dishonest.” His Workplace of Administration and Funds director, the right-wing zealot Russell Vought, introduced his goal was to have them “considered as villains” and “put in trauma.”
Trump unleashed Elon Musk and his DOGE operatives to fireplace staff and shutter packages, trampling the regulation within the course of. Trump brags that over 300,000 can have been fired or chased out by the tip of the 12 months. Trump’s Workplace of Personnel Administration goals to put in a spoils system, ordering that civil servants pledge loyalty to White Home insurance policies.
Unions—staff organizing and bargaining on the office—are central to how staff fare in our economic system. Unionized staff get pleasure from higher wages, working situations and advantages. Widespread union membership counterbalances company energy and lifts the wages of nonunion staff too. Not coincidentally, employee organizing rights have been below assault for many years—sadly, right this moment just one in 10 staff has union illustration.
Trump instantly got down to cut back that quantity. In his first days in workplace, he stripped 50,000 TSA staff of their union rights. In March, he moved to cancel the union rights of greater than 1,000,000 federal staff, in what Georgetown College labor historian Joseph McCartin referred to as “by far the most important single motion of union-busting in American historical past.”
Trump’s assault—an excessive model of what Ronald Reagan did when he infamously fired placing PATCO staff in 1981—now faces authorized challenges. It impacts profession federal staff who work in every state serving to veterans, supporting farmers, defending our meals provide, responding to disasters, and finishing different vital duties. Greater than 80 percent work exterior DC, and almost one-third are veterans.
“This administration’s bullying techniques signify a transparent menace not simply to federal staff and their unions, however to each American who values democracy and the freedoms of speech and affiliation,” warned AFGE president Everett Kelley.
Trump then moved on to paralyze the Nationwide Labor Relations Board, the only recourse for private-sector staff in search of to say their rights below labor regulation, together with the fitting to arrange for higher hours, wages, and dealing situations. The board is tasked with defending not solely union staff however everybody who joins coworkers to enhance their working situations. Staff can’t immediately sue their bosses for violating their organizing rights; they have to as an alternative file an Unfair Labor Observe cost for investigation by a regional NLRB workplace. The NLRB additionally performs a key position within the formation of recent unions by conducting office elections—and, at the least in concept, policing administration’s conduct throughout these elections.
In his second week in workplace, Trump moved to disembowel the NLRB, firing member Gwynne Wilcox, together with NLRB Normal Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. It was the primary time a board member had been fired in historical past, and it not solely violated the textual content of the Nationwide Labor Relations Act; it left the board with out a quorum to make selections. Companies have seized on this growth to delay and deny union certification, exemplified by attorneys for Jeff Bezos’s Amazon arguing {that a} landmark vote by Philadelphia Entire Meals staff to affix UFCW is moot.
Whereas Trump defended his motion in court docket, his ally Elon Musk pursued his swimsuit in opposition to the NLRB—House X v. NLRB—arguing that the board itself is unconstitutional. In what quickly turned a sample, the Supreme Court docket allowed Trump to proceed along with his firing of Wilcox, and on August 19, the Fifth Circuit dominated the NLRB is likely unconstitutional in its present construction.
Attacking Wages and Advantages
Whilst he challenges the foundations of labor regulation, Trump has struck immediately at employee wages and advantages.
Trump’s Division of Labor is abandoning protection of the Biden rule that expanded the fitting to additional time pay for 4.3 million workers. The DOL additionally introduced plans to stop enforcing a Biden-era rule that made it more durable for employers to misclassify staff as impartial contractors, potentially costing workers 1000’s of {dollars} annually.
Fashionable
“swipe left under to view extra authors”Swipe →
Trump additionally continues to oppose elevating the federal minimal wage for staff, which stays mired at $7.25 per hour—unchanged since 2009, and now below the official poverty level.
As well as, Trump’s spending invoice—which lowers taxes on the wealthy whereas chopping well being and meals assist for low-wage staff—represents an unprecedented switch of wealth from working households to companies and billionaires. The cumulative results of the act, in keeping with the Congressional Funds Workplace, can be to reduce the income of the underside 20 percent of households by an estimated 4 p.c. In a Could letter to Congress, the AFL-CIO calculated that Trump’s Medicaid cuts alone will result in the lack of 880,000 jobs and improve total healthcare prices for working households when suppliers start passing their unreimbursed prices to employers, Taft-Hartley funds, and different payers.
Healthcare suppliers referred to as the cuts an unsustainable blow for a few of the smaller hospitals that communities depend on for vital care. “It’s very clear that Medicaid cuts will lead to rural hospital closures,” warned Alan Morgan, the CEO of the Nationwide Rural Well being Affiliation.
As a substitute of utilizing taxpayers’ cash to empower staff, Trump has moved to strip protections from authorities contract staff. In March, he rescinded an executive order that raised the minimal wage for federal contractors, chopping these staff’ wages wherever from 25 to 60 percent.
Though the median pay for residence healthcare and private aides was lower than $17 an hour in 2024, Trump proposed to deprive millions of care workers—the overwhelming majority ladies and disproportionately age 55 and older— of minimum-wage and additional time protections, setting them up for deep cuts in pay.
Employment for individuals with disabilities steadily elevated below the Biden administration, which took steps to finish the sub-minimum wage for staff with disabilities. Trump instantly moved to withdraw that rule, enabling employers to proceed to pay staff with disabilities even lower than the federal minimal wage.
Trump’s Gestapo-style worksite raids are terrorizing immigrant staff, detaining and deporting restaurant and resort workers; farm, meals processing and building staff; day laborers; and even meal supply drivers. In the meantime his insurance policies make it more durable to get and preserve work permits, visas, and inexperienced playing cards, leaving tens of millions of immigrant staff much more weak to predatory employment practices.
Employee Security and Well being
An estimated 140,587 US staff died from hazardous working situations in 2023, in keeping with a new AFL-CIO report, whereas 5.2–7.8 million staff get damage or sick on the job annually. Whilst life expectancy declines among the many working-age inhabitants, Trump has moved to weaken employee protections dramatically.
The Occupational Well being and Security Administration, tasked with implementing office well being and security requirements, has traditionally been understaffed. Below Biden, it will have taken OSHA 185 years to examine every office below its jurisdiction as soon as. Trump’s funds requires a 30 p.c discount in inspections, making it as soon as in each 266 years.
Trump additionally gutted the Nationwide Institute for Occupational Security and Well being, gives analysis on office security requirements, lowering its workforce from 1,400 staff to 150 and slashing its funds by 80 p.c. Trump has even used government orders to strike down particular measures to guard staff, together with stalling the proposed Biden rule to control warmth situations within the office. Annually, 600 staff die from heat-related causes and almost 25,000 are injured.
In April, the Trump administration introduced that it will not implement a Biden rule, 40 years within the making, to guard miners from harmful silica exposure. And his administration weakened the flexibility of the Mine Security and Well being Administration to impose security necessities associated to roof falls and mine explosions.
Equal Employment Alternative
In his obsession to obliterate variety, fairness, and inclusion, Trump is gutting civil rights protections for staff. In his first weeks in workplace, he fired two EEOC commissioners and the company’s common counsel. He defunded the agency tasked with guaranteeing that federal contractors adjust to equal employment alternative legal guidelines and rescinded the manager order implementing antidiscrimination protections. And his administration has threatened to go after companies that voluntarily proceed DEI protections—with some 60 p.c leaping to eradicate point out of such packages of their annual stories.
Collateral Injury
Along with these direct assaults on staff, their unions, wages, and rights, working individuals are being harmed by a broad vary of Trump insurance policies. For instance, the administration moved to shutter the Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau that protected shoppers from varied financial institution frauds and predation, successfully ending, as Matt Stoller reported, “any Federal enforcement of shopper safety guidelines for monetary merchandise,” opening the door to rampant fraud and dishonest. The administration’s cuts of workers, assets, and authority on the Environmental Safety Company will depart staff and their households uncovered to extra polluted water and air.
Whilst Trump boasts of his American “revival,” early returns are bleak for staff. Wages aren’t maintaining with costs, and job development has slowed. Medical health insurance prices within the Inexpensive Care market will spike an estimated 18 percent next year. Family electrical payments are up 10 percent, largely because of Trump’s assaults on renewable power. Predatory monopoly pricing will unfold with firms primarily given a free move from anti-trust enforcement. Pupil mortgage burdens will depart millions of workers in default, resulting in the garnishing of wages.
Trump’s assaults on staff should not an accident—they’re the plan. Employers are being empowered to behave lawlessly towards their staff. Unions are being stripped of the authorized construction that protected their existence. Immigrant staff are abused, hunted, and deported. Girls and minorities will endure from discrimination at charges not seen for the reason that civil rights revolution. Staff’ households are shouldering greater prices for meals, healthcare, and power. Corruption and monetary fraud will unfold.
This assault, not a part of Trump’s supposed mandate, just isn’t fashionable. Seventy percent of Americans assist unions, Most People have even turned against Trump’s immigration raids. Not surprisingly, as Trump’s assault on staff escalates so too do his more and more frenetic efforts to distract, dissemble, and divert. He shamelessly lies about his intentions and his triumphs, blaming others for what goes flawed whereas preening himself, the cockroach billionaire, because the employee’s champion.
One factor is evident: Neither the Congress nor the courts will save working individuals. As soon as extra, staff themselves should rise and switch the tide collectively.
On this second of disaster, we’d like a unified, progressive opposition to Donald Trump.
We’re beginning to see one take form within the streets and at poll containers throughout the nation: from New York Metropolis mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s marketing campaign centered on affordability, to communities defending their neighbors from ICE, to the senators opposing arms shipments to Israel.
The Democratic Occasion has an pressing option to make: Will it embrace a politics that’s principled and fashionable, or will it proceed to insist on shedding elections with the out-of-touch elites and consultants that received us right here?
At The Nation, we all know which aspect we’re on. Daily, we make the case for a extra democratic and equal world by championing progressive leaders, lifting up actions preventing for justice, and exposing the oligarchs and companies profiting on the expense of us all. Our impartial journalism informs and empowers progressives throughout the nation and helps convey this politics to new readers prepared to affix the combat.
We’d like your assist to proceed this work. Will you donate to assist The Nation’s impartial journalism? Each contribution goes to our award-winning reporting, evaluation, and commentary.
Thanks for serving to us tackle Trump and construct the simply society we all know is feasible.
Sincerely,
Bhaskar Sunkara
President, The Nation
Extra from The Nation
Daily, the genocide in Gaza, armed conflicts, displacement, and hunger lead to tens of millions of victims and refugees world wide.
Many non-white communities elevated their assist for the president. He’s concentrating on them anyway.
Even the Danes are getting offended. The Danes!