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UNIONS ARE HANDING DEMOCRATS A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY AMID THE SHUTDOWN
BATTLE  
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Judith Levine
September 30, 2025
The Guardian
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_ Federal workers’ move offers Democrats a chance to win the budget
battle – and their identity. _

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer after meeting with President Donald Trump at the White
House on Monday., Annabelle Gordon / Bloomberg via Getty Images

 

The Federal Unionists Network (FUN) and 35 national, state and local
unions have written a letter
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to the Democratic congressional leadership – Chuck Schumer in the
Senate and Hakeem Jeffries in the House, urging them to hold out
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against Republicans in the budget negotiations, even if it means a
government shutdown and halted paychecks. The signatories represent
“tens of thousands of federal workers”, according to an FUN press
release.
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The Democrats’ demands, the letter says, should include “adequate
funding for critical public services” and a “guarantee” that
funds appropriated by the Congress are spent.

 
This gives the Democrats the chance not just to win this budget
battle, but to begin to win back their identity and the people who
should be their base.
 
“A government shutdown is never Plan A,” the letter reads.
“Federal workers and the communities we serve will face severe
hardship. But federal workers will willingly forego paychecks in the
hopes of preserving the programs we have devoted our lives to
administering.”
 

These workers are showing remarkable solidarity with each other. They
are willing to stage the closest thing to a general strike the US has
seen since 1946, when more than 100,000 Oakland, California, workers
stayed home, shutting the city down.

Federal workers cannot legally go on strike. But in the last few
months, even the option of a wildcat walkout presented a quandary. It
would have granted, if they struck, the Trump administration exactly
what it wanted: a decimated civil service. They also would have given
their nemeses a psychological victory unpalatable to themselves.
“When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to
work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains,” Russell
Vought
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now US office of management and budget (OMB) director, told a
conservative audience
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last October. “We want their funding to be shut down … We want to
put them in trauma.”

But now, they’re ready to wake up in the morning and not go to work
– if they haven’t already been fired. They are not the villains
but the heroes. And they’re handing the trauma back to those who
have been almost gleefully traumatizing them.

Moreover, labor is standing together not just for its members’ bread
and butter. In fact, as miners and railroad workers, teachers and auto
workers have done for decades, the members are foregoing their own
bread and butter for a greater good, for future workers – and in
this case, for a progressive American future. They are speaking for
what they should have been speaking for all along: economic justice,
democracy and the wellbeing of the people.
 

They’re speaking for what the Democratic party should be speaking
for.

“Federal unions and workers stand with members of Congress who
oppose damaging cuts, unconstitutional executive overreach, attacks on
science and data itself, and attempts to undercut organized labor,”
the letter says. “We join together with you in the fight to save and
strengthen the many important government programs and services that
have been created throughout our country’s history to raise
standards of living, provide safety, and ensure the continued growth
of science, industry, and American prosperity.”

Organized labor is giving the party that abandoned it another chance
to show which side it is on. They’re standing with Democratic allies
in Congress. Those Congress members must stand with them.

As usual, the party’s leadership is focusing on one thing. This time
it’s cuts to Obamacare subsidies. That’s a good start.

But in this letter, the unions have told most of the narrative. The
Democrats need only to furnish the moral of the story: why are the
Republicans cutting everything under the sun, endangering the
country’s safety, security, and prosperity? _To further_ _enrich
their rich friends and corporate benefactors._

Now’s your chance, Democrats. Don’t blow it.

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Judith Levine is a Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of
five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism
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* Federal Workers; Government Shutdown; Democratic Party;
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