Trump attacks public employees, but unions are fighting back
Last week in Philadelphia, municipal workers got a new contract and higher pay after making good on their promise to strike. Mayor Cherelle Parker agreed to pay a little extra to hardworking people who wake up early to keep the city working, including those picking up the garbage. In solidarity with the workers, rapper LL Cool J had canceled a planned Independence Day performance.
The successful strike stands out at a moment when government workers at the city, state and national levels are under attack from President Trump. He portrays them as a lazy group whose sleepy heartbeats are evidence that government is too big, too bureaucratic and wasting tax dollars.
The Supreme Court gave the president's distorted view of government workers more power last week when the justices ruled the president is within his legal rights to execute mass job cuts without consulting Congress. The high court said Trump's unilateral plan to fire workers doesn't break the law. Only after he acts, the ruling said, can judges determine if Trump violated Congress's power under the Constitution to set spending for federal agencies.
But Trump's ugly view of people-powering government was exposed last week. A flood in Texas drowned hundreds, including children at a summer camp, prompting questions about Trump's cuts to federal workers who could have given early warnings and possibly saved lives. The former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told CNN that there was a 'lack of a warning coordination meteorologist' in the Austin-San Antonio office, due to early retirement offers by the administration to cut staffing.
At the start of Trump's second term, he went after top officials at the Justice Department in apparent revenge for their work indicting him for alleged crimes. Now with the Supreme Court ruling, he is free to pursue large scale firings of federal workers. And they have come 'with no explanation or warning, creating rampant speculation and fear within the workforce over who might be terminated next,' as the Washington Post reported.
A federal worker at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau told the paper she is mourning her agency's demise and concluded, 'We are toast.'
The massive number of job cuts could be in the 'tens of thousands,' eliminating staff across the federal government, ranging from the 11 Cabinet departments to 19 federal government agencies. At the State Department alone, the New York Times reported, 'nearly 2,000 employees … have been targeted for dismissal.'
This demonization of public employees suffused the Heritage Foundation's 'Project 2025,' an effort led by Russell Vought, who is now heading Trump's Office of Management and Budget. Vought infamously declared that he is going after federal workers intending to 'put them in trauma.'
That destruction came to life with efforts led by Elon Musk, Trump's biggest campaign donor and the world's richest man. He created the Department of Government Efficiency to cut the federal workforce by reducing government spending by a trillion dollars. But at a Cabinet meeting in April, Musk conceded his effort was not close to reaching that goal, even as he pushed federal workers to take early retirement and buy-outs or risk being outright fired.
Musk also failed to find wasteful activities. 'DOGE is not offering any solid claims that it has improved services in any way … rather, it has made the quality of some government services worse,' Donald Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, told The Guardian.
Last week, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced it was abandoning a plan to fire 80,000 federal workers whose prime mission is to help veterans with their health care. Reports of experienced staff leaving the National Nuclear Security Administration, which handles the nation's nuclear weapons, set off alarms. When an outbreak of bird flu hit earlier this year, the Agriculture Department had to bring back workers it had pushed out.
The Trump administration's constant trashing of federal workers amounts to an attack on unions at a time when government employees are highly unionized, but only 6 percent of private sector workers and 10 percent of all U.S. workers are in unions.
President Joe Biden was the first president to join a picket line, and he said, 'The reason this country is working is because the middle class is growing. The middle class built this country, and unions built the middle class.'
Historically, unions have been seen by Republicans as a major source of money for Democrats. But blue-collar, non-college and non-government workers — private-sector union members — are increasingly identifying as Republicans.
Some union leaders, such as Teamsters President Sean O'Brien, broke with Biden and the Democrats. He surprised many by speaking at the 2024 Republican National Convention and did not support the Biden-Harris ticket in 2024, or more precisely, did not support Harris when Biden left the race. That trend will be tested this year as unions play a vital role in state legislative and gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia.
There are signs of union revival. In 2023, the Teamsters won a major contract victory after threatening to strike against UPS.
With the union win in Philadelphia, the old Mark Twain joke fits labor union power today: 'The report of my death was an exaggeration.'
Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book 'New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.'
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