Guess who?
Remember when the Teamsters endorsed Trump in 2024 and its president appeared at the GOP convention even though Joe Biden had literally saved their pension plan? How about when the UAW president recently endorsed Trump’s tariffs regime despite Biden walking their picket line and the union seemingly understanding the larger stakes in the 2024 election?
Yeah, we can count unions as another institution that’s turned into a bunch of cowards in the face of Trump’s power grab. Eric Loomis wrote about this in the NY Times today. I’ve included a gift link.
This is a most unfortunate Labor Day for labor. The labor movement has taken it on the chin repeatedly in the last several decades, but President Trump is the most ruthlessly antilabor president since before the Great Depression.
If the labor movement does not fight harder than it has since Mr. Trump regained the presidency, its future will be dire.
Mr. Trump and his administration have unilaterally stripped collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal workers. At the Department of Veterans Affairs alone, 400,000 workers, or 2.8 percent of America’s unionized workers, have lost their collective bargaining rights because of an executive order that will eventually affect more than one million federal workers. Mr. Trump ushered in Labor Day weekend on Thursday by continuing his assault of federal unions, adding the Patent Office, NASA and the National Weather Service to his list of targeted agencies.
Despite this assault on their very existence, we have barely heard a peep from unions. Where is organized labor in the public fight to maintain union jobs, stop the stripping of the safety net and lead the fight for democracy? Other than some statements and angry speeches, the movement has been muted.
If the labor movement wants to fight for its survival, it must return to mass mobilization tactics, reminding Americans that their rights come through working together — not through supporting a president who talks about helping American workers while slashing worker safety regulations, supporting tariffs that raise the cost of consumer goods and stripping workers of their legal rights to contracts.
All this is happening at a time when Americans’ approval of unions is the highest it has been since the mid-1960s.
It’s the vibe, baby, the vibe. Like so many Americans a whole lot of union members are worried about eggs and transgender girls in sports and nothing else matters.
Seriously, is you read the whole piece the litany of destruction of union jobs just in these first few months of Trump’s reign is staggering. And unions are not exactly leading the resistance, which they should be.
Why aren’t they? Well, I have to guess it’s the same reason all the institutions are failing. They either don’t see the danger, don’t think they have any power, or really do think Trump will be good for them.
As Loomis says, there has never been a more important role for unions than now:
To survive the Trump onslaught, organized labor must rise to the moment. First, it must go outside of union protocol by calling out labor leaders such as Mr. O’Brien. Until unionists take back the narrative of resistance, many in the larger liberal coalition will think that unions are much more supportive of Mr. Trump than they actually are.
Second, unions must get their own members engaged in issues that interact with politics. That includes much more political education, not just around candidates at election time but also on issues that matter now. For decades, many unions have shied away from discussing divisive issues (such as immigration) with their members. For some, this is a realistic response to the fact that unions means less than other political beliefs to many members. But when unions talk to their members about politics only at election time, it leads to a disconnect between rhetoric and action that causes many members to tune out.
Third, unions must step into the vacuum that millions of Americans feel when it comes to their economic lives. The hopelessness many people feel on economic issues — like the shuttering of factories and inflation — has led to working-class support for Mr. Trump. But it has also led to a surge in support for unions in this country. Most people believe the system is broken and are looking for someone to fix it. Unions can provide that leadership.
Let’s hope they step up before it’s too late.