By Benny Schaft

The U.S. billionaire-led ruling class has officially declared war — not just on unions but on the working class. In addition to the Trump/Musk administration’s mass firings of federal workers, late on March 27 Trump signed an executive order ending collective bargaining agreements with unions representing federal workers whose jobs involve national security. 

The order includes employees in the Departments of State, Defense, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Treasury, Justice and Commerce, the Federal Communications Commission and the part of Homeland Security responsible for border security. It also impacts the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whose employees are essentially cops and do not deserve a union.

It specifically targets the American Federation of Government Employees, which Trump complains in a “fact sheet” have filed many grievances to “block Trump policies.” AFGE, which represents more than 800,000 federal employees, condemned the move in a March 27 statement noting that it affects the collective bargaining rights of more than 1 million federal employees. 

AFGE National President Everett Kelley said: “President Trump’s latest executive order is a disgraceful and retaliatory attack on the rights of hundreds of thousands of patriotic American civil servants — nearly one-third of whom are veterans — simply because they are members of a union that stands up to his harmful policies.” (CNN, March 28)

Jimmy Williams, Jr., general president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, responding to Trump’s attacks, said: “This is what we mean when we say the Trump administration is coming for unions, and they are not afraid to hide it. When union busting begins at the White House, it gives power to other bosses to do the same, and we can’t let that happen. Part of what made President Reagan’s 1981 attack on striking Air Traffic Controllers so devastating to our movement was our [lack of] response. We cannot make the same mistake.

“If President Trump wants to continue his war on the working class with the support of his oligarch friends, then workers must fight back.” (iupat.org, March 28)

Bill aims at crushing a movement 

In addition to Trump’s ban, which may not stand up in court, Congress is now attempting to pass a bill that would ban and limit federal government workers — including postal workers — from organizing unions. This bill is nothing more than a blatant attempt to privatize federal jobs, all in the name of profit.

Introduced in mid-March by U.S. Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Senate bill S1006 has been named the “Federal Workforce Freedom Act” by its MAGA sponsors. It would ban all federal workers from organizing and joining unions as well as tear up all existing labor agreements, arbitration rulings and union grievances. (governing.com, March 17)

This is just the latest attack in the long war against organized labor, waged since the Gilded Age of the 1880s and 1890s throughout the 20th century and up to today. The capitalist class has always worked tirelessly to prevent workers from tasting the fruits of their own labor — things as basic as democracy and human rights in the workplace — because to them, those rights cut into profits.

The bosses’ justification? They claim corruption and so-called “illegal activities” within unions have forced their hand. But let’s be real — this is not about corruption. This is about power. The government, particularly under administrations like Trump’s, has ramped up its anti-union crusade to strip away the already scarce rights that workers have in this country. This is about control.

And this isn’t the first time. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, the predecessor to this bill, was designed to restrict the power of organized labor out of fear that workers would demand more democracy in the workplace and control their own health and welfare benefits. The history of labor in the U.S. has always been a battle between workers demanding basic rights and a government hellbent on suppressing them.

So why does this matter in 2025? Because this bill isn’t just about breaking unions — it’s about crushing a movement. Organized labor has been one of the few forces in this country willing to call out the genocide of the Palestinian people and the countless others suffering under U.S.-backed imperialism. It is no coincidence that as labor gains victories against the capitalist class, like at Starbucks and Amazon, the billionaires’ government moves to silence it. 

The success of workers proves a simple truth: Capitalism is inefficient, corrupt and unsustainable. People’s democracy — workers’ democracy, socialism — has grown in popularity not just worldwide, but here in the United States.

This bill is an attempt to curb not only the labor movement but the socialist movement as well. And that is exactly why every worker, regardless of job, must rise up. Organize. Speak out. Support your fellow workers. The media will tell you otherwise, but the truth is: you hold the power — not those in office, not the corporations, not the elite.

History has shown that when workers rise up, the country stops. And when the country stops, the capitalists lose everything.

The bosses know this. That’s why they’re afraid. That’s why they’re scrambling to break up our unions before we realize what we’ve known all along — 

They need us.

We don’t need them.