Donald Trump: Unionbuster

Sean O’Brien’s bet on Donald Trump has sure paid off for the labor movement!

Make no mistake. The Trump administration’s anti-union behavior is not just about federal employees. Donald Trump is not just a boss abusing and degrading his own workers. He’s the president of the United States declaring open season on workers. What a president says and does about workers matters. It mattered when President Reagan’s union busting of the air traffic controllers effectively told private-sector CEOs that they could bust their workers’ unions, too. Conversely, it mattered when President Biden spoke consistently about the right of workers to choose whether to form a union in their workplace; when he prioritized job quality, project labor agreements, local hiring commitments, registered apprenticeships, and child care in the use of federal funds.

It mattered when President Biden said, “I believe in collective bargaining,” and then backed it up with action. As acting U.S. labor secretary, I assisted labor and management to reach agreements at the bargaining table on numerous occasions. Because President Biden and I believed that workers deserved their fair share, and that strikes were an exercise of workers’ most fundamental rights, I came to the table not to pressure the parties to reach an agreement, but to help achieve contracts that reflected workers’ true value. During our administration, workers and employers agreed to record wage increases; improvements to benefits, training, and health and safety protections; provisions regarding the use of artificial intelligence; and guarantees of and around job security. When Joe Biden was president, petitions for union elections doubled, particularly increasing among warehouse workers, baristas, retail workers, graduate student teaching and research assistants, and others long thought too vulnerable to organize. Membership in federal-sector unions increased by nearly 20 percent in a single year.

Presidents matter. Donald Trump stripped over 400,000 workers of their union in the last few days. When Joe Biden was president, 400,000 private-sector workers became newly unionized. It isn’t a coincidence that union membership, union power, and union popularity surged under the first president to walk a picket line alongside striking workers.

Nor will it be a coincidence if Trump’s attacks on public servants invite private-sector employers to follow his lead and disregard their own existing union relationships, especially now that Trump has disabled the National Labor Relations Board by illegally firing Gwynne Wilcox and bringing the NLRB below the quorum it needs to issue decisions and hold employers accountable. His open disdain for his own employees and his combative, us-vs.-them mentality about employers and workers will inevitably lead to more labor strife. And remember, this is the president who completely shut down the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), the federal agency responsible for preventing labor strife.