Is it time for a national strike plan?
Trump is destroying the union rights of thousands of workers by stripping union rights from six federal agencies, like the National Weather Service, NASA, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security Environmental Protection Agency by ending collective bargaining and taking over the office spaces used by unions.
Trump has said to just ignore contracts for employees in specific unions. So federal workers who lost rights can no longer fight agencies over contract violations, such as safety and meal allowances. Workers are being fired without cause.
Government workers are the core of labor’s power base and there has been no push back. The next thing they’ll go after is prevailing wage laws, which will hurt the non-workers for they will no longer receive the prevailing, which is the same as union wages, but the union workers will still get their union wages and benefits. However, will they face being underbid on jobs by nonunion shops so all will lose except the corporations, who are nonunion that pays whatever the hell they want, like $7.50 per hour that is still being paid to federal workers. Trump and the GOP, who will not stop until they destroy all unions and there has been no pushback from Democrats. We, in labor, keep saying that workers have the ultimate power because we can withhold our labor. So, where is the mass mobilization effort? Organized labor has only 6 to 10 percent or workers unionized. We cannot afford to not fight back. We are now under the most ruthless anti-labor president since the 1920s. This is the fight of our lives for labor unions and our democracy.
Yes, they are coming for us. Workers need to have one another’s backs because no one else will. Neither the broader labor movement nor the Democratic party are prepared to meet the urgency of this moment. So it’s going to fall upon the rest of us to mount a real resistance against Trump’s authoritarian takeover. We’re going to have to get our hands dirty. I don’t care if you have a good, well-paying union job and you are in the middle class now—if you see a worker being dragged out of his workplace regardless of how skilled the job and potentially taken to another country, you should be ready to be there for that worker. When I.C.E. shows up, gather around and shame them into leaving. It has worked in other places. America is sleep walking into authoritarianism, and if there’s anyone out there who is a member of a labor union that is safe—at this point— and doesn’t think this applies to them. Understand that they just haven’t gotten to you yet. They’re coming for all of us. There are ...
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