SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
union-busting
Help Protect Federal Workers From Trump's Union-Busting Attacks
Only months after courting union voters with pro-worker campaign rhetoric, President Trump is on track to become the most anti-union president in modern American history.
Oct 05, 2025
During a 2024 campaign stop in Detroit, President Donald Trump energized the crowd by proclaiming: “I will protect what is ours. I will protect our workers. I will protect our jobs.” Then, asking the audience to look around at empty buildings and remember how they’ve been ripped off, Trump continued, “These pro-worker policies are among the many reasons I’ve been overwhelmingly endorsed by the rank-and-file membership of the Teamsters.”
Only months after courting union voters with pro-worker campaign rhetoric, President Trump is on track to become the most anti-union president in modern American history.
The President’s record is clear: Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee, Neil Gorsuch, cast the deciding vote in Janus v AFSCME, a “right-to-work” ruling Trump praised for allowing workers to opt out of union dues while freeriding off the benefits of collective bargaining provided by dues-paying members. The president’s two labor secretaries, Eugene Scalia and Lori Chavez-DeRemer, have vigorously peeled away protective regulations for workers. And following the unprecedented firing without cause of Gwen Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that addresses unfair labor practices and safeguards workers’ rights remains paralyzed by its inability to reach a quorum.
But what sets President Trump apart is his targeting of public sector unions.
In early April, Representatives Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Ryan Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) introduced bipartisan legislation, “The Protect America’s Workforce Act” (H.R. 2250), to overturn Trump’s executive order and restore all terminated collective bargaining agreements.
During his first term, President Trump issued executive orders targeting federal employee unions, aimed at “weakening their ability to bargain contracts and curtailing the amount of time union representatives can spend helping members with their complaints,” according to Andrea Hsu of NPR’s "Morning Edition." Union officials complained that their ability to file grievances was almost nonexistent.
The president then kicked off his second term with an anti-union executive order, called “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce,” that allows the reclassification of as many as 10,000 workers, making them at-will employees and stripping union protections. But to this point, no traditional “Schedule F” employees have been reclassified.
Perhaps that’s because President Trump has found an easier path to union busting.
In March, the President cited national security concerns as he directed 22 federal agencies to disregard collective bargaining contracts covering 950,000 federal employees. In late August, he signed a second order “stripping union rights” from 440,000 “employees at six additional agencies,” according to the New York Times. These employees represent the overwhelming majority of unionized federal workers.
Public sector unions have been a bulwark against declining labor power over the past half-century. While private sector unionization has withered to 5.9% (from 35% in the 1950s), unions still represent 32.2% of public employees, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report. But in only a few months, President Trump has removed union protections from more than a million federal workers, representing over 15% of the 7 million public-sector union members nationwide.
If the president’s moves survive legal challenges, he will be the single biggest union buster in American history, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.
But there is hope.
In early April, Representatives Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Ryan Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) introduced bipartisan legislation, “The Protect America’s Workforce Act” (H.R. 2250), to overturn Trump’s executive order and restore all terminated collective bargaining agreements. A companion bill that includes a repeal of the most recent executive order has since been introduced in the Senate.
The bill’s authors need 218 signatures to force a vote against the will of House leadership. As of September 17, it has 216 signatures, including 213 Democrats and 3 Republicans, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.
If passed in the House and Senate, the bill becomes law and overrides Trump’s union-busting executive orders, even if the courts uphold them. The president could then sign the bill into law or veto it and send the legislation back to Congress where an override requires a two-thirds majority in each chamber.
In either case, it remains possible to protect the collective bargaining rights of federal employees. So, call your representatives. Flood their inboxes. Let them know that we intend to stand up for our federal civil servants.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Boycott T-Mobile—and All Trump Collaborators
Let's make it clear not just to T-Mobile but all of corporate America: There are costs to siding with this authoritarian government.
Oct 03, 2025
Ever since the Irish Land League organized community members in County Mayo to band together and refuse to serve, work for, trade with, or even deliver mail to the English land agent, Captain Charles Boycott, the boycott has become a staple in activists’ toolkit. And nearly 160 years since Captain Boycott was effectively ostracized—as US President Donald Trump and his cronies assail American democracy and send troops into our cities and masked goons onto our streets—it's a tool that’s gaining a renewed prominence once again.
After Target dropped its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) targets in February, Black faith leaders, including Pastor Jamal Bryant, called for a boycott of the company. “What we learned from the Montgomery bus boycott is that racist America doesn’t respond to speeches, it responds to dollars,” Pastor Bryant told his parishioners at his 10,000-member megachurch in Atlanta.
In the months that followed, Target’s sales, foot traffic, and stock price tanked. By August, Forbes was announcing that the boycott had cost the Target CEO his job and the company’s investors $12 billion.
After Elon Musk started his attempts to destroy the US government earlier this year, including bragging about putting USAID into the woodchipper, an act that may have killed half-a-million people so far, thousands committed to boycotting Tesla as part of the #TeslaTakedown movement.
If a company like T-Mobile believes that there are no economic consequences to siding with authoritarianism, they are much more likely to do it.
In the midst of the boycott, Tesla sales collapsed, the stock price cratered, and before long Musk was out of the government and engaging in a very public bitching session about President Trump.More recently, after Disney suspended Jimmy Kimmel for comments following the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk, a boycott of Disney grew so rapidly, with tens of thousands of cancellations of Disney, Hulu, and ESPN, that it forced the company into reinstating the comedian.
Attempting to build on this, the labor union, the Communication Workers of America, the Tesla Takedown campaign, and the climate coalition I held lead, Stop the Money Pipeline, have launched the T-Mobile Boycott.
In the fight to save democracy, T-Mobile has chosen the wrong side: It’s hosting Trump Mobile on its network, despite the conflicts of interest being so great they may amount to corruption. T-Mobile is also partnering with Elon Musk’s Starlink, pouring billions into the far-right extremist’s pockets, and it lobbied in favor of Trump’s deadly budget bill, which will strip healthcare from millions of Americans. T-Mobile has also engaged in years of union busting so vicious it recently became the first telecommunications company to be added to the AFL-CIO’s boycott list.
We’ve set a goal of 10,000 T-Mobile customers canceling their contracts between November 14-16. In the process, we hope to build on the energy of the Target, Tesla, and Disney boycotts and make it clear not just to T-Mobile but all of corporate America: There are costs to siding with this authoritarian government.
If you’re a T-Mobile customer, you can take the pledge to hang up on T-Mobile here.
Even if you’re not a customer, we encourage you to take the pledge to boycott T-Mobile. The boycott is happening right before the holiday season, when a lot of people switch carriers—tens of thousands of people pledging to never switch to T-Mobile at this time of year is an important part of the campaign.
But I also want to be honest with you, I don’t know if this campaign will work. While we’re urging people to cancel en masse next month, I recently completed a test run and canceled my contract with T-Mobile and switched to Visible (saving more than $60 on my monthly cell phone bill in the process).
As economically advantageous as it was however, it took me about 45 minutes to switch from T-Mobile, including a call to the company to get a “port out pin.” In the grand scheme of things, 45 minutes isn’t an eternity, but it’s also not nothing. It took me less than four minutes to cancel my Disney+ subscription after Kimmel’s suspension.
I have no idea if we can get 10,000 people to do something that might take them nearly 45 minutes, even if we can convince them it is a small but important act in the fight to save democracy.
But I do know this, in On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the 20th Century, Timothy Snyder’s first lesson was, “Do not obey in advance.” And not only is T-Mobile obeying in advance, it's actively courting the administration, even as the horrors pile up: the attacks on free speech, the naked threats against political opponents, the vanishing of countless human beings into a gulag in El Salvador.
So, in this time of grave peril for this country and the world, let us use our money to build the world we want to see.
From Target to Tesla to T-Mobile, let us boycott the collaborators.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Teamsters Rally in NYC After Amazon's 'Illegal' Firing of 150 Unionized Drivers
"Amazon would be nothing without its workers," said one worker. "We're the ones who power their profits. We're the ones who put our health and safety on the line every single day."
Sep 09, 2025
Teamsters and their supporters rallied outside a New York Amazon facility Monday in protest of what they said was an "illegal" firing of over 150 unionized drivers.
According to the union, the fired workers were employed by the delivery service provider Cornucopia, one of thousands of providers the company contracts with to deliver packages. These workers joined the Teamsters last year as the union went on strike in nine cities across the US.
Amazon claims these workers are not employees, but "contractors," and that firing them does not constitute illegal union busting.
The union, however, described this as "a phony shell game," saying that the contractors "wear Amazon uniforms, follow Amazon rules, and work off Amazon's routing software."
"Amazon calls the shots," read a statement from the union. "They are the employer and everyone knows it."
Last year, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) official in Los Angeles agreed that the company had engaged in unfair labor practices when it fired other unionized contractors in California, and determined that they did, in fact, count as employees of Amazon.
At the time, this ruling seemed to provide some clarity as Amazon workers fought to have their union recognized by the company, which has refused to recognize them for years.
This remained the case even after 2024, when more than 10,000 Amazon workers joined the Teamsters and the union launched the largest strike ever against the company right before the holidays, during which they demanded the company negotiate a fair contract that included wage increases and addressed workplace safety issues and illegal union busting.
Outside Amazon's DBK4 facility, which joined the strike last year, the Teamsters and their allies renewed calls for negotiation Monday.
"Amazon is breaking the law and we let the public know it," said Antonio Rosario, a Local 804 member and Teamster organizer.
Latrice Shadae Johnson, a Teamster who works at DBK4, added that "Amazon would be nothing without its workers."
"We're the ones who power their profits. We're the ones who put our health and safety on the line every single day. We're the ones who made them a $2 trillion corporation," said Johnson. "If Amazon thinks we're going to take this lying down, they have another thing coming. Our solidarity is only growing stronger."
That solidarity has come from many corners across New York City, with members of the City Central Labor Council, part of the AFL-CIO, taking part in the rally.
The Teamsters were also joined by democratic socialist state Sen. Kristen Gonzalez (D-59), who defeated the industry-backed cousin of former Queens US Rep. Joe Crowley in 2022.
"I've been in office three years, and every single year I've been right here in this spot because every single year Amazon has done union-busting," Gonzalez said to cheers from the crowd, "It's because they think they are above the law."
In 2024, Amazon joined a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk's company SpaceX, arguing that the NLRB, which is responsible for adjudicating labor rights violations, is unconstitutional because its members cannot be fired at will by the US President.
Just one week into his term, President Donald Trump fired NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox, effectively crippling the board's ability to rule on union-busting cases.
According to LaborLab, which publishes reports on corporate union busting, "Without a functioning board, companies like Amazon and Tesla can engage in union-busting tactics with impunity, facing no legal consequences for violating workers' rights."
The progressive state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, currently the frontrunner to be New York City's next mayor, brought national attention to the Teamsters' plight on Monday.
"One of the most powerful corporations in the history of the world is firing unionized drivers in Queens," Mamdani wrote on X. "Solidarity with the Teamsters who rallied today against these unjust layoffs and to demand good faith negotiations."
Several Democratic members of the House of Representatives from New York, including Jerry Nadler and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, issued their own statements of solidarity, as did Republican Mike Lawler.
"Any company that denies workers the right to choose [collective] bargaining rights, including Amazon, should be confronted," Lawler said. "Unions are the backbone of this country. They helped build this country. And they damn well will ensure we have a strong and secure country moving forward."
Nadler added that he stood "with Amazon Teamsters as they rally in Queens today to hold Amazon accountable for its unlawful anti-union activity."
"Amazon," he said, "stop union busting and start bargaining a fair contract now!"
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular