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TRUMP VOWED TO CHAMPION US WORKERS – THE REALITY HAS BEEN A
RELENTLESS ASSAULT  
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Steven Greenhouse
February 16, 2025
The Guardian
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_ President has begun slashing federal workforce while hobbling labor
watchdogs NLRB and EEOC _

Demonstrators rally in support of federal workers in Washington DC on
14 February 2025., Mark Schiefelbein/AP

 

As a presidential candidate last fall, Donald Trump
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to battle for US workers, but ever since he returned to the White
House, he has taken a surprisingly large number of anti-worker
actions, labor experts say. Some of those moves, among them hobbling
the National Labor Relations Board, will help Trump’s billionaire
business friends, most notably Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

In his first few weeks back in office, Trump fired the acting chair
of the National Labor Relations Board
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leaving the US’s top labor watchdog without a quorum to enforce laws
that protect workers’ right to unionize. Trump has designated Musk,
a vehemently anti-union billionaire, to launch an all-out war against
the federal bureaucracy and workforce, and Trump and Musk have
essentially treated the country’s 2 million-plus federal employees
as if they were disposable.

Not stopping there, Trump fired
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members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), leaving
it without a quorum to carry out its mission of fighting against
discrimination. In his crusade to downsize the government and demolish
the “deep state”, Trump and his administration have fired
thousands of federal employees
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moves that union officials say have violated laws and rules
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require due process and a finding of poor performance before workers
can be dismissed.

“Donald Trump is showing that his promises to be a champion of
workers are hollow,” said Judy Conti, government affairs director of
the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group. “He
surrounds himself with people who are anti-worker. He has a history of
being anti-worker, but he tries to put a nice face on it. He says
he’s a champion of workers. He’s just not.”

In a move that many federal workers found distasteful, Trump asked
them to snitch on each other, to inform on co-workers engaged in
diversity, equity and inclusion activities. The Trump administration
further angered federal employees, as well as the labor movement, by
announcing that it would nullify contracts
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with federal employee unions in the final weeks of the Biden
administration.

Last month, just hours after an American Airlines jet collided with an
army helicopter over Washington DC, killing 67 people, Trump dissed
and angered
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Aviation Administration employees, when he denounced diversity, equity
and inclusion (DEI) policies as fostering incompetence and suggesting
that many FAA employees were unqualified. In another move upsetting
worker advocates, Trump named Russell Vought
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one of the architects of the controversial rightwing
blueprint Project 2025
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to run the White House budget office. Project 2025 is brimming with
anti-worker recommendations
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among them abolishing all government employee unions across the US.

“Trump has already shown that he’s not a friend of working
people,” Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the country’s main
union federation, said in an interview. “Project 2025 is playing out
exactly as we feared, and America’s workers are right at the heart
of those attacks.”

One Trump move that particularly upset labor leaders was his order to
fire Gwynne Wilcox, the NLRB’s acting chair and a Democrat, even
though her term ran until 2026 and even though the labor board is an
independent agency. That left the five-member board with just two
positions filled and thus without a quorum to make decisions (although
its regional offices can still operate).

Protesters gather at a rally organised by the American Federation of
Government Employees near the US Capitol on Tuesday. Photograph: Will
Oliver/EPA

Calling her dismissal “unprecedented” and a “blatant
violation” of the law, Wilcox is suing Trump
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asking to be reinstated. “He does not have the authority to remove a
board member unless they have engaged in neglect of duty or
malfeasance,” Wilcox said in an interview. She noted that Trump
never gave any reasons for firing her and failed to give advance
notice or allow for a hearing.

“Their practical point was to prevent any work from being done,”
Wilcox said. “It’s counter to what the agency is supposed to do,
which is to protect the rights of working people and enforce the
law.”

In defending that firing, the Trump administration
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that Trump had the power to dismiss any executive branch employee he
wishes. That claim is expected to be litigated all the way to the
supreme court.

The AFL-CIO’s Shuler said: “The illegal firing of Gwynne Wilcox
– we’re fighting that tooth and nail. It did exactly what Trump
wanted to do, which was stymie the one agency that workers rely on
when they’re in an organizing drive and taking risks and getting
fired. They no longer have the board they need to protect them.” Ben
Sachs, a Harvard labor law professor, added: “If you believe in
unions and in workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively,
then dismantling the NLRB is not the way to show one’s support for
workers.”

Musk’s company SpaceX – which the NLRB has accused of firing
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workers illegally – has brought suit in federal court to have the
NLRB declared unconstitutional
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Amazon, which was founded by Jeff Bezos, has brought a similar
lawsuit
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NLRB officials found that Amazon broke the law numerous times in
fighting against unionization.

“We know the corporations that Musk and Bezos run have expressed a
clear interest in shutting down the NLRB and have deployed teams of
lawyers to accomplish that,” Sachs said. “Now they’ve got their
way, at least temporarily.” If federal courts order Wilcox’s
reinstatement, the NLRB would again have a quorum, enabling it to
operate.

Trump also fired two EEOC commissioners, Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn
Samuels, leaving it too without a quorum. He also fired members of two
boards that hear cases in which federal employees assert they have
been improperly fired or treated: the Merit Systems Protection Board
and the Federal Labor Relations Authority.

“All of these are agencies where workers who believe their rights
have been violated can go to get remedies,” said Conti of the
National Employment Law Project. “They’re essentially freezing the
ability of these boards to remedy workers’ problems.”

Congressional Democrats Protest Closing CFPB. C-SPAN.org

Mark Gaston Pearce, executive director of the Workers’ Rights
Institute at Georgetown University, said it was disturbing that Trump,
instead of firing one of the NLRB’s two white members, fired Wilcox,
the only African American woman to serve on the NLRB in its 90-year
history. Pearce asserted that Trump’s and Musk’s firing of
hundreds of federal workers involved in DEI programs was
disproportionately hitting workers of color. “It’s all code for
getting rid of people of color,” Pearce said.

An African American official who worked at the Department of Education
for more than 15 years and who insisted on anonymity said she was
recently put on paid administrative leave merely because she had once
participated in a DEI training. She said she had no idea whether she
would be reinstated. “They’re vilifying the civil service,” she
said. “It feels like a betrayal.”

Linda Ward-Smith, president of an American Federation of Government
Employees union local representing 4,000 Veterans Administration
workers in Las Vegas, said many federal employees were disgusted with
how they had been treated. “Workers are telling me it’s a hostile
work environment due to all the emails they’re receiving” –
including Musk’s “Fork in the Road” email
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2 million federal employees suggesting they take buyouts and messages
saying the Trump administration wants loyal employees. “They’re
scared,” she said. “They feel the sky is going to fall.”

Ward-Smith said Trump’s and Musk’s attacks on DEI were making many
workers of color anxious and thinking of leaving their government
jobs. Several African American and female workers said they felt even
more unwelcome when Trump appoints people like Darren Beattie, a
former Trump speechwriter, to a top state department position even
though Beattie once said
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“Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to
work.”

Conti defended the federal government’s longtime effort to promote
workforce diversity. “It is to promote true, full meritocracy,”
Conti said. “It is not about quotas. It is not about not hiring
white people. It is about removing the barriers that people of color,
women, LGBTQ and other disadvantaged people face to compete for jobs
for which they are qualified.

“What people need to know,” Conti continued, “is this is not
some sort of targeted campaign against employment practices that have
gone too far. It is a broad-based campaign to roll back our
country’s civil rights protections. Full stop.”

_STEVEN GREENHOUSE is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and
the workplace_

_Why you can rely on THE GUARDIAN not to bow to Trump – or anyone_

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* Donald Trump
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* federal workers
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* Layoffs
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* NLRB
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* EEOC
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* AFL-CIO
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* big business
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* CFPB
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* worker rights
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