EPI is leading the fight to lift up American workers.

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Donald Trump likes to promote himself as a friend of “forgotten” workers. But his administration has worked all too often to undermine America’s workers, as well as the institution that has traditionally been their biggest champion: labor unions.

Month after month EPI has done groundbreaking research that shines a spotlight on the Trump administration’s attacks on workers and unions.

Donate to EPI today to protect the nation's working people from policies that undermine their ability to earn a fair wage and support their families. ([link removed])

In recent generations, as the power of unions has declined, wages have stagnated, income inequality has grown, and corporate America has gained far too much sway over our politics and policymaking. EPI has done an invaluable job detailing and explaining these unfortunate trends.

Trump’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has systematically rolled back workers’ ability to form unions and collectively bargain for a fair return on their work. Trump’s NLRB, for example, is proposing to deny workers the right to use their employer’s email system to discuss problems they face at work. Trump’s NLRB has also overturned a rule that would have made it far easier for workers at McDonald’s and other franchised operations to unionize.

EPI has played a vital role in setting the record straight about Donald Trump’s bogus claims that he is a champion of America’s workers. Donate today to make sure the truth is heard. ([link removed])

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Trump’s imprint on the Supreme Court has seriously set back workers’ rights. Trump’s first nominee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, delivered the deciding vote in the 5-to-4 Epic Systems case, which makes it far harder for workers to protect their rights at work; it allows corporations to prohibit workers from banding together to bring class action lawsuits over wage theft, sexual harassment, and other workplace violations.

Gorsuch also cast the deciding vote in a case that delivered a major blow to labor unions. In Janus v. AFSCME, the court’s conservative majority ruled that government employees can’t be required to pay fees to the unions that bargain for them and win raises for them.

By allowing many government workers to become “free riders,” that ruling has thrown obstacles in front of public-employee unions in an attempt to undermine their effectiveness.

The labor movement in the United States is already far weaker than its counterparts in other industrialized nations. Just one in 10 American workers belongs to a union, down from more than one in three in the 1950s.

With employer resistance on the rise, compounded by the Trump administration’s hostility, unions are under attack as never before.

In no other industrial nation do employers fight so hard to defeat labor unions. At a time when corporate America has grown hugely powerful, we need a strong workers’ movement to serve as a countervailing force to business’s might and billionaire donors.

We know this is possible. A growing number of Americans want to join a union.

A 2017 MIT study found that 48 percent of nonunion workers would join a union if they could, up from 32 percent in 1995. A 2019 Gallup poll found that public approval for unions is near its highest level in 50 years. Union membership actually grew in 2017 before declining in 2018, a sign that unions could grow once again if we rolled back the Trump Administration’s attacks on organizing and enacted stronger labor laws.

The recent wave of teacher strikes shows that workers not only can win better pay and working conditions when they stand together, but can also win for the community at large―for instance, by demanding smaller class sizes and more librarians and nurses in the schools. In other encouraging signs for labor, union membership has been growing in the service and hospitality industries, as well as in areas that don’t yet have a strong union footprint, including the tech industry, grad students, and digital journalism.

EPI plays an essential role not just in educating and enlightening, but in galvanizing public support for America’s workers. For years, EPI has been the single best source of information and statistics on what is happening with the nation’s 150 million workers―whether about wage stagnation or the many benefits that unions provide, such as safer workplaces and higher wages for unionized and nonunionized workers alike.

Thanks, EPI, for all that you do to fight for an economy that works for everyone.

Donate today to power the research that is so vital to lift up America’s workers and build a fairer economy. ([link removed])

Steven Greenhouse
Author of Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor
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