Although President Donald Trump has claimed that every policy of his administration was designed to lift up the American worker, he has acted consistently, since returning to office in January 2025, to undermine workers chosen representatives, Americas labor unions.
The most flagrant Trump action along these lines occurred in March 2025, when he issued an executive order that terminated collective bargaining rights for more than 1 million federal government employees. This measure, the largest single union-busting action in American history, ended union representation and protections for 1 out of 14 unionized workers in the United States.
Trumps anti-union campaign dovetailed with his efforts to terminate the employment of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, many of them union members. Federal workers, Trump claimed, are destroying this country, and are crooked and dishonest. Many of them, he said, dont work at all.
To supervise his massive purge of public employees, Trump chose Elon Muskthe worlds wealthiest individual and largest donor to his presidential campaignto direct a mysterious Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Delighted with the job, Musk declared, without any evidence, that there were people on the government payroll who are dead and others who are not real people. Addressing a conference of conservatives, the flamboyant multibillionaire charged that waste is pretty much everywhere and brandished a chain saw against what he called bureaucracy.
As Musks minions rampaged through federal agencies, planning large-scale firings, DOGE informed workers that, if they voluntarily resigned, they would be paid without working during the remainder of the fiscal year. Confronted with the difficult choice of possible termination or resignation with some financial compensation, 154,000 employees signed up in the first six months for the new voluntary resignation program. Nobody really knew if your job was safe, recalled a former Social Security Administration employee. I thought, better just to take it voluntarily, rather than being forced out.
Labor unions, of course, were appalled by the situation, and turned to the federal courts for redress. But, although some lower court decisions bolstered their efforts to maintain union rights and job security for federal workers, courts at a higher level, including the Republican-dominated U.S. Supreme Court, granted Trump most of the expanded powers that he claimed.
Thus far, the mass termination of federal workers has wreaked havoc on their lives ending careers, undermining financial security, and creating severe mental distress. And it has also produced a weaker labor movement.
Estimates are that 300,000 federal workers will have lost or left their jobs by the end of 2025.
Meanwhile, the embattled labor movement turned to Congress. Here it worked to secure passage of the Protect Americas Workforce Act, which would repeal Trumps executive order abolishing union rights. In the House of Representatives, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refused to allow a vote on the legislation, promoted by the AFL-CIO and by Democrats. On November 17, however, the sponsor of the legislation, Representative Jared Golden (D-ME), finally secured the necessary 218 signatures (from 213 Democrats and 5 renegade Republicans) on a discharge petition to force House action, which presumably will occur soon.
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