LAS VEGAS – AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond, the Steelworkers’ former vice president gave a rousing speech to the 3,000 USW delegates assembled here for their convention in which he called for labor to step up and play a leading role in the battle against Trump’s attempt to dismantle so much of what is important to U.S. workers.
He said that the battle must involve solidarity across national lines, saying workers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico “must unite against corporate greed.
“Attacks on everything that we stand for have been relentless,” Redmond said of the GOP Trump regime’s anti-worker anti-union actions. He particularly singled out Musk’s chainsaw attacks, with Trump as his puppet, on federal workers and programs. “We are the voice of those who, today, feel hopeless,” said Redmond.
So USW and other unions “must organize and energize a new generation of workers” in all three nations to build a stronger labor movement and “a future that prioritizes the rights of workers and allows them to exercise their collective strength.
“If we are leading with our values, there isn’t a more core value than the right to collectively bargain,” Redmond declared. The corporate and political elites in all three nations continue and increase their anti-union attacks, particularly using divide-and-conquer tactics. Those tactics, though Redmond did not explicitly say so—he didn’t have to at this convention—aim to split workers by race, gender and class. The union answer is “real solidarity that crosses borders.”
Musk is also a notorious labor law-breaker, and not just when his chainsaw decapitates federal workers and turns programs into wood chips. He’s repeatedly broken labor law at his private firms, Tesla and SpaceX. When the National Labor Relations Board ruled against him in those cases, Musk and fellow moguls Howard Schultz of Starbucks and Jeff Bezos of Amazon, went judge-shopping in federal courts to try to destroy the National Labor Relations Board.
“It’s not just about helping the ultra-wealthy get wealthier,” USW President David McCall declared as he opened the convention. McCall said of the corporate class’s objective of wrecking the NLRB by declaring it unconstitutional: “It’s about making sure we don’t share in the wealth we create.” That class is also scared because “They know how powerful we are when we’re united,” McCall added. “So we are going to organize like hell.”
Immediate battle on the horizon
The immediate battle on the union’s horizon, he said, is Trump’s huge tariffs on imports from Mexico and especially Canada.
Much of the steel and aluminum used in vehicles comes across the U.S. border from mills and mines in Southern Ontario and USW is very influential there, too. Anything that cuts that trade threatens Steelworker jobs on both the U.S. and Canadian sides of the Detroit River.
Economic elites, McCall said, oppress workers. “To turn back the tide of economic injustice and corporate greed, we need to truly be all in. We can hold nothing back, and we need every member to join in the fight–for as long as it takes,” McCall declared.
“Being ‘all in’ isn’t a one-time action, and it isn’t a bet. It’s our way of operating, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.” And while the work of creating economic justice can often take time, “Through our unity and our determination, we’re balancing the scales against powerful foes.”
Wins included not just organizing in new industries, but repeal of right-to-work laws in Michigan and enactment of anti-scab legislation in Canada, said McCall.
Even as the Steelworkers opened their convention however, anti-worker anti-union President Trump threw a monkey wrench into the works, ordering a “review” of the controversial sale of iconic U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel of Japan—a deal the union thought was dead and buried by Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden.
In an April 7 executive order, Trump told much of his Cabinet to review the deal. The interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. recommended against it last year, on national security grounds, and Biden agreed.
During last year’s presidential campaign, banning Nippon’s multibillion-dollar deal was one of the few issues that Trump, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, agreed upon.
All were bidding for the electoral votes of the key swing state of Pennsylvania, where the Steelworkers still swing great electoral weight. The union not only opposed Nippon’s purchase of U.S. Steel, now officially USX, but actively rounded up an alternative U.S.-based bidder, Cleveland Cliffs. Trump won Pennsylvania, and the election.
Cleveland Cliffs offered more money for the majority stake in USX, but the USX board, in corporate greed and in disregard for the workers, the customers and their families, rejected it—because the board, comprised of fellow capitalist titans, would walk away with more money from Nippon.
Now the question is whether Trump will do an about face, and drop the government’s opposition to selling USX to Nippon. His announcement gave no clue.
It only said the review would be confidential, and that “the parties”—Nippon, its U.S. subsidiary and the special firm the two established to push for the deal—could submit evidence showing the deal did not carry “national security risks.” The committee, Trump said, must report within 45 days.
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