Labor to Trump: You can’t be anti-union and claim you’re pro-worker

Shawn Fain, president of the United Automobile Workers, speaks during the Democratic National Convention Monday, Aug. 19, 2024, in Chicago. He also spoke at the Wednesday meeting of the Democratic Party's Labor Council. | Paul Sancya / AP

CHICAGO—“Workers in their unions are the biggest exercise in democracy,” declared Julie Su, acting Secretary of Labor in the Biden administration, during the second Labor Council session at the DNC on Wednesday.

The opposing ticket in the presidential race, Trump-Vance of the Republican Party, claimed that their platform represents the working families in the U.S., but the organized labor movement isn’t buying it.

“You cannot be pro-Elon Musk and be pro-worker. You cannot be anti-immigrant and pro-worker. You cannot be against voting rights and pro-worker. You cannot be pro-sexual harassment and pro-worker,” Su continued. “You especially cannot be anti-union and pro-worker!”

Kenny Cooper, the president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), went back to the previous administration to illustrate the point. During the last Congress under Trump, the trade union movement was attempting to secure funding for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), which is responsible for maintaining and continuing defined benefit pension plans. The Republicans offered up $3 billion on their end but then told workers and their unions that they’d have to come up with $4 billion on their own.

That Congress, according to Cooper, was willing to “risk letting 2.5 million workers lose their pensions that they worked their lives for. They were offering up our own money back to us, the money we paid in taxes,” he said.

The GOP couldn’t help retired workers, “but they could bail out Corporate America,” Cooper said. “They could spend $142 billion on Bank of America; $280 billion on CitiGroup; $25 billion on the auto industry; $180 billion on AIG; $400 billion on Freddie Mac; $18 billion on the airline industry; $30 billion on Bear Stearns; $300 billion on savings and loans…but they couldn’t find $7 billion to help union families.”

The IBEW is paying close attention to Project 2025, the far-right playbook for the next Trump administration, said Cooper. “They want to backtrack all the gains we’ve made as working people…. They don’t want us to go back just a few steps,” he said. “They would rather erase us and silence all workers. They want the rules rigged for Corporate America.”

Presidents of two major unions—AFSCME, which covers public sector workers at the state and local levels, and AFGE, which includes government employees, also sounded the alarm bells on Project 2025.

Everett Kelley, president of AFGE, called on the labor movement to unite this November to block a second Trump presidency. “Trump calls our union members the ‘deep-state’,” he said. “But the truth is we are regular Americans. We are nurses serving our veterans; we are food inspectors who ensure we have safe food to eat; we are asylum officers who help refugees get shelter; we are FEMA who help suffering Americans….”

“But Project 2025 wants to change that. They want to break our unions and stack them with political flunkies.”

“They want to take away our rights, take our unions away, and make us invisible,” said Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME. “It’s all right there in black and white” in the Project 2025 document, he said. “But we’re taking a stand and saying, ‘Hell no it’s not going to happen!’”

President Shawn Fain of the United Auto Workers called on labor to stand up, a phrase that he’s been using since the successful “Stand-Up Strike” by auto workers against the Big Three late last year. The attendees of the panel began shouting “Trump’s a scab!” as Fain began speaking—a callback to his Monday night speech at the DNC.

“It’s a moral clarity of standing with working-class people,” Fain said. “That’s the fight. This is our moment, and it boils down to the same question every time I speak: Which side are you on?

“It’s a very clear picture, there are only two sides in this fight. You’re either with the billionaire class or the working class.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders also addressed the panel, to cheers from the audience of trade union delegates gathered at McCormick Place Chicago. “I’m not gonna tell you what you already know—Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy, and he must be defeated,” the senator said.

“But the point I want to make today is that we need to remember that we are living in the wealthiest country, not only on Earth but in the history of the world. At the same time, we’re living in a nation that has more wealth inequality than it has ever had in the history of the world.

“The trade union movement is taking on not only the bosses, they’re also taking on a culture that tells them that we are powerless,” Sanders said. The billionaire class, he said, “controls the media, controls the economy, with the highest concentration of ownership in every sector of this country.”

Working people, he said, are asking whether or not Washington even hears them or if they even “give a damn” about them. “Too often, that answer is no,” Sanders said. “But our demands are what the majority of Americans believe—not just a handful of trade union leaders.

• “We believe that healthcare is a human right.
• That we need to raise the minimum wage and make schooling from childcare to graduate school available to all kids, regardless of their income, so they can get the education they need and not leave school in debt.
• That we need to raise taxes on the richest people in our country.
• That we need to expand social security by lifting the cap on taxable income and expanding the Medicare program.

“These are not outrageous demands. These are the demands of the American people. And the unions’ demands are the American workers’ demands!”

Sanders closed with the tasks ahead facing the labor movement: “We have to block Trump… but the day after we have to mobilize and increase trade union membership. We have to bring the unions together. We have to put pressure on Washington to ensure our country responds to the working people—the majority—and not just the CEOs and their campaign contributions.”

READ MORE on Sanders’ critique of capitalism at the Democratic National Convention.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Cameron Harrison

Cameron Harrison is a trade union activist and organizer for the CPUSA Labor Commission. Based in Detroit, he was a grocery worker and member of UFCW Local 876 where he was a shop steward. He also works as a Labor Education Coordinator for the People Before Profits Education Fund, assisting labor organizations and collectives with education, organizing strategy and tactics, labor journalism, and trade union support.