America's Labor Unions Are Souring on Trump
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Stock markets slid and business executives frowned when President Donald Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on auto imports, but he could take solace that the nation's most prominent union president applauded the move. Shawn Fain, the usually combative president of the United Auto Workers, heaped praise on the tariffs, saying they would help 'end the free-trade disaster that has devastated working class communities for decades.' Fain added, 'The Trump administration has made history with today's actions.'
Fain's words got plenty of attention—he had been an outspoken supporter of Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign, and many Americans saw his praise of the auto tariffs as evidence that labor unions were enthusiastic about Trump.
But now, five weeks later, it's abundantly clear that most unions are angry as hell about Trump 2.0. 'We've been facing a barrage of attacks from the administration,' said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation's main union federation, in an interview. 'They're slashing jobs. They're ripping up union contracts. They're cutting services. Trump's delivered on nothing that he promised. We would say his scorecard is a fail.'
Trump's anti-union moves have come faster and been vaster than labor leaders had anticipated. He and Elon Musk have fired tens of thousands of federal workers while ignoring job protections in their union contracts. Trump dismissed the chair of the National Labor Relations Board well before her term ended, leaving the board without a quorum to function. He issued an executive order to destroy collective bargaining rights for 1 million federal employees. 'That's the biggest assault against labor in our history,' Shuler said.
America's labor unions—which represent 16 million workers—have responded to Trump's blitz in several ways. First, they've mounted a huge defensive effort, largely through lawsuits, to save the jobs of fired federal employees and to preserve federal workers' bargaining rights. (A federal judge ruled that Trump violated the law in terminating the bargaining rights of federal workers.)
Second, many unions and their members have joined the resistance—they've marched in many communities' 'Hands Off' rallies, and they have staged many of their own protests. Third, unions have held town hall meetings in purple districts where Republican members of Congress refused to do so because they feared the public's wrath.
Shuler said a new AFL-CIO poll found that a majority of union members say the country is moving in the wrong direction, with many complaining that Trump has done nothing to reduce inflation. 'We're seeing the most unified labor movement we've seen in a long time,' Shuler said. 'The best organizer is a bad boss.'
Unions weren't unified during the 2024 campaign—indeed voters in union households backed Harris over Trump by just 8 percentage points—53 percent to 45 percent, according to exit polls. While most unions endorsed Harris, two powerful unions—the Teamsters and the International Association of Fire Fighters—didn't endorse anyone, a move seen as a blow to Harris. The Teamsters have sought to maintain good relations with Trump, and the union's president, Sean O'Brien, vigorously backed Trump's choice for labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the daughter of a Teamster. But some Trump moves have irked union leaders who sought good relations; O'Brien slammed Trump's choice of a management-side lawyer, Crystal Carey, to be the NLRB's general counsel. O'Brien said she worked at a 'notorious union-busting' firm,' 'wants to decimate labor unions,' and 'has spent her entire professional career backing Big Business to the detriment of working people.'
Construction workers have long been viewed as more pro-Trump than most union members, but that didn't stop Sean McGarvey, president of North America's Building Trade Unions, from angrily calling on Trump to bring home Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a wrongly deported immigrant who was a member of the sheet metal workers' union. 'We demand' that he 'be returned to us and his family now,' McGarvey said. 'Bring him home.'
Jimmy Williams, president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, explained why many construction unions are souring on Trump: As a result of Trump's cancellation of subsidies and various projects, he said some $100 billion in planned construction has been scrapped, from electric battery factories to offshore windmills—eliminating a large number of construction jobs. 'It's been chaos. It's been economic chaos,' Williams said. 'Then there are the immigration raids, and Trump's sheer lack of wanting to follow the rules and the law. It's scary. We are more conservative than most unions, but what you're seeing right now from the Trump administration is not conservative. You're seeing fascism.'
After lauding Trump's auto tariffs, the UAW's Fain faced criticism within the labor movement, and he has increasingly distanced himself from the president since then. In an April 10 speech, Fain said, 'We're not aligning everything we do with the Trump administration.' Then he voiced a far-from-glowing view about Trump's tariffs: 'Big picture, we support some use of tariffs on auto manufacturing and other similar industries. We don't support the use of tariffs for political games about immigration or fentanyl. We do not support reckless, chaotic tariffs on all countries at crazy rates.'
He slammed Trump for seeking to destroy federal workers' bargaining rights, for 'illegally firing' a member of the NLRB, and for 'attacks planned' on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. 'That's not good for the working class,' he said. Asserting that Trump has ignored due process, Fain attacked many deportations, noting that Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University grad student who faces deportation for his pro-Palestinian activism, had been a member of a UAW graduate students' union.
'There is a reason we campaigned aggressively against this vision of America in the last election, and we will continue to speak out against it and mobilize against it,' Fain said.
Although the 2026 elections are 18 months away, the union movement is already planting seeds to help ensure the Democrats win back control of the House of Representatives. Labor leaders hope that union members who have marched in protests this spring will be willing to talk to fellow workers and knock on doors next year when the 2026 campaign heats up. 'This is about ladders of engagement,' Shuler said. 'Most of the actions on the ground are pathways and drumbeats that will keep escalating. People are frustrated, and they want to channel that into action.'
Joseph McCartin, a labor historian at Georgetown University, said it's good that unions are mobilizing against Trump, but he added a note of caution: 'There's still a lack of strategy to really bring pressure to bear. Part of it is everyone was caught by surprise by the ferocity and scope of what's happening. There is a movement to form an effective strategy, but I don't think it's fully in place yet.'
McCartin said unions did well last November in getting out members to vote for Harris. 'But they just weren't able to compensate for the bleeding of working-class voters beyond their ranks,' he said. 'The threat of a smaller union movement trying to swim against that current raises serious questions.'
Some labor leaders I spoke to worry that unions face an existential crisis, with Trump seeking to sabotage the NLRB and destroy bargaining for federal workers. Moveover, Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Amazon have brought lawsuits seeking to have the NLRB declared unconstitutional. And then Trump is forever seeking to use his populist magic to woo blue-collar workers.
But Michael Podhorzer, a former AFL-CIO political director, sees a silver lining. 'I don't see anything out there right now that will divide unions,' he said. 'It's an eternal truth about politics that when you're running against the party in power, it really takes a lot to divide you. The major elements of the labor coalition have come together, and Trump has certainly reinforced that.'
In other words, a united labor movement will play a big role in helping the Democrats take back the House in 2026.
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