The Trump administration’s decision to mobilize and deploy 4,000 members of the National Guard and 700 Marines to Los Angeles is disturbing and absolutely unjustified. It is an attempt to stifle dissent through military force — something which has no place in a democracy — and a signal that if we wish to preserve our democratic freedoms, working people will have to be prepared to defend them through action in the streets, in our workplaces, and at the ballot box. Furthermore, it is clear that the administration is seeking to create physical conflict during immigration raids in order to justify a military response.

Protests against raids by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including the mass protests in Los Angeles over the past several days, have been overwhelmingly peaceful, especially considering the deliberatively provocative behavior of ICE agents. At a protest in Chicago last week, according to an eyewitness, “When [federal law enforcement] came on the scene, they gave no orders. They didn’t ask anybody to disperse. They didn’t give any instructions. They just immediately began using their batons to push.”

According to the lawsuit filed by the State of California against Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hesgeth, ICE agents in Los Angeles “engaged in military-style operations” which included “sealing off entire streets around targeted buildings and using unmarked armored vehicles equipped with paramilitary gear.” The Los Angeles Police Department was also deliberately provocative, showing up to the peaceful protests in riot gear and paramilitary equipment, shooting journalists with rubber bullets, and arresting David Huerta, the president of SEIU California.

The recent ICE raids in Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere have targeted workplaces, reinforcing the reality that although Trump tries to portray all immigrants as criminals and terrorists, the overwhelming majority are workers. As our union and the rest of the labor movement have learned over the past half-century, the real purpose of immigration enforcement is to maintain a permanent underclass of workers afraid to stand up for their rights — which drags down wages and working conditions for all workers.

Deliberately provoking violence and then using the response to justify massive military crackdowns on civilian protest is one of the ways that democracies slide into authoritarianism. We know from the experience of other countries where the working class has defeated authoritarian governments that the labor movement, with our power to stop work, has an important role to play alongside mass mobilizations in the streets. If we prize our liberties and wish to maintain our rights, the labor movement and working people more broadly must denounce the unconscionable use of the U.S. military against our own people and prepare to engage in widespread nonviolent resistance if it continues.

Carl Rosen
General President

Andrew Dinkelaker
Secretary-Treasurer

Mark Meinster
Director of Organization

By UE Officers | Photo Courtesy of ueunion.org | UE News Reuse Policy

The post UE: Military Response to Immigration Protests a Step Towards Authoritarianism appeared first on Labor Today.

Fortunately, the U.S. labor movement has begun to rally behind Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation (SMART) local 100 union brother, was illegally arrested by the Trump administration’s Draconian Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  On March 15^th the was deported to El Salvador where he remains in the maximum security Center for Confinement of Terrorists (CECOT) without due process.

The building trades have rallied for the return Garcia back to his home and family. Sean McGarvey, the President of the North American Building Trades Unions (NABTU), has demanded that Garcia be returned. Just two months ago, a NABTU leaked memo showed their willingness to remain silent on Trump actions affecting the working class, it appears attacking one of their members finally forced them to step up. In a statement McGarvey said:

“We need to make our voices heard. We’re not red, we’re not blue, we’re the building trades; the backbone of America. You want to build a five billion dollar data center? Want more six-figure careers with healthcare, retirement, and no college debt? You don’t call Elon Musk! You call us!”

And further,

“And yeah, that means all of us. All of us! Including our brother, SMART apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who we demand to be returned to us and his family now! Bring him home!”

SMART in conjunction with the Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), of which Garcia was a member, have held rallies for his return.

World Federation of Trade Unions affiliate, Roofers Local 36, has created and circulated a petition to bring Garcia home.

It must be understood that the deportations of trade unionist Kilmar Garcia and others, without due process, is an attack by monopoly against labor. This is proven by Donald Trump’s own statement to El Salvador president Nayib Bukele,

“I said homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places.” Trump is apparently employing the tactic of attacking the “weakest link” in hopes that it will create little to no resistance among the broader labor movement. The building trades unions have so far countered, this marks a huge shift as the building trades unions historically have held reactionary views, especially on immigration. The solidarity among the building trades unions demonstrates that the labor slogan, “an injury to one is an injury to all,” is learned through experience—the hard way. With this we must ask the question, which side are you on?

The post Unions Finally Step Up as Trump Deportations Hit Labor appeared first on Labor Today.

While former President Biden’s claim to have been “the most pro-union President in history” is certainly debatable, President Trump is on track to become the most anti-union President in history in his second term.

In his first three months in office, Trump has signed executive orders which seek to cancel collective bargaining agreements covering over one million federal workers. Although justified with reference to “national security,” the executive orders target workers across the federal government, in agencies as disparate as Veterans Affairs, the Treasury and Energy Departments, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The executive orders seek to not only overturn existing union contracts, but strip workers’ right to be represented by a union at all. They also instruct government agencies to stop deducting union dues from members’ paychecks. Since Trump was inaugurated, the largest federal government workers’ union, the American Federation of Government Employees, has seen its membership surge by tens of thousands of members.

As veteran labor reporter Steven Greenhouse pointed out in a recent article in The Guardian, Trump’s “aggressive wave of anti-union actions is already spurring some [private-sector] US employers to take a more hostile stance toward unions.”

Private-sector employers who wish to take advantage of the current moment to attack or weaken their workers’ unions will find it easier to do so since Trump fired National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox in January, leaving the Board unable to issue decisions. Following another executive order, the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) shut down the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in March.

On April 3, an anti-union trade association asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to “invalidate fifteen NLRB cases that were decided during the Biden administration.” As analyst Matt Bruenig writes at NLRB Edge:

This sort of thing has never happened before. The NLRB is an independent agency and the AG has no statutory role in how it operates. Such a move by the AG would be illegal under prevailing understandings of administrative law, but of course Trump and the conservative legal movement are seeking to have the Supreme Court invalidate a large swath of administrative law on the theory that it unconstitutionally restricts the power of the president.

An even more disturbing and bizarre attack on the ability of the NLRB to protect workers’ rights was revealed earlier this week when a whistleblower from the NLRB’s information technology department revealed to Congress and NPR that operatives from DOGE likely removed around 10 gigabytes of sensitive information from the Board’s case management system.

In addition to obvious concerns about the breach of privacy (NLRB case data includes sensitive personal information such as social security numbers and home addresses, as well as proprietary corporate information), if employers got ahold of this data, it would make it easier for them to fire — and blacklist — active union members.

Of particular concern is that DOGE is headed by billionaire Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX has been the subject of NLRB complaints filed by its workers, and who has shown himself to be rabidly anti-union.

The post Trump Administration Goes on Union-Busting Spree appeared first on Labor Today.

Carey was an NLRB official from 2009-2018, after which she joined notorious union-busting law firm, Morgan Lewis where she made partner in 2024. Morgan Lewis has been a thorn in the side of labor for decades including during the 1981 PATCO strike, currently Morgan Lewis represents Amazon in their fight against the nationwide campaign to organize their sweatshop-like facilities.

We must ask who benefits from an appointment like this. It certainly is neither the labor movement nor the working class as a whole. Trump knows full well that the misleaders of labor have relied heavily on the administrative state to organize and maintain any semblance of power against the assaults for monopoly capital; this is an attempt to pull the rug out from under them.

The only path forward is a mass rank-and-file movement aimed at fighting back against monopoly capital’s new assault. We can only defeat the bosses with a class-oriented trade union movement built from below and ready to fight. We need a militant labor movement to take the lead in building an anti-monopoly coalition to fight the bosses and organize the unorganized.

The post Trump Continues Assault on Labor, Names Union-Busting Lawyer as new NLRB General Counsel appeared first on Labor Today.

This coincides with President Trump’s appointment of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to a new agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). DOGE is tasked with “tackling government bureaucracy and streamlining processes” of the US Government. This would put the NLRB in its crosshairs as it is supposed to be a check on the autocracy of corporations in the US. Musk’s role in this proposed initiative is a direct conflict of interest considering Musk’s legal fight against the NLRB.

We must ask the question, who elected Musk? How has an oligarch been put into a position to oversee a government apparatus supposedly aimed at being a check on tyrannical rule? Of course, these appointments have been a consistent feature of the US state apparatus, but the appointment of Musk, who spent over $200 million of his own money to get Trump elected, is in effect doing the quiet part out loud. This is an indication of how the NLRB and workers’ rights in general will fare during Trump’s second administration.

To add insult to injury, the Democratic majority during the “lame duck” session of the last Congress failed to re-confirm NLRB Chair, Lauren McFerran, which would have maintained a pro-worker NLRB for the first two years of Trump’s administration. With so-called “friends of labor” like this, who needs enemies? By design, this failure has handed a hobbled NLRB over to a Trump regime hell-bent on stripping away workers’ rights. Now, Trump has fired other members of the NLRB, including General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo and Former Chair Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the Board without a quorum.

The current situation among the misleaders of labor is an over-reliance on the administrative state to protect the rights which militant rank-and-file workers fought and died for. LUEL exists because we see the imperative for the US labor movement to regain its militancy in a class-oriented fight against capital. Only this can ensure a strong future for both the labor movement and the working-class as a whole in the United States.

In solidarity,
Labor United Educational League

The post LUEL Statement on the State of the NLRB appeared first on Labor Today.

The most pressing issues discussed dealt with people on probationary status, long-distance workers worrying about their job status, and possible forced termination of their jobs. Another issue that was brought up was people being forced to go back to work if they were remote. President Hotopp addressed concerns that were raised and clarified the positions of the union on recent issues. AFGE 3928 had completed a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) back in October 2023. The contract is good until September 2026 and then until a new one is negotiated, so the union was not worried about recent declarations of the Trump regime to ignore and cancel all government union contracts made in the last 30 days.

President Hotopp outlined ways the union will be fighting back including using injunctions, filing grievances, and other legal procedures to protect the rights the workers have won. Recently, AFGE joined with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees(AFSCME) to file a lawsuit against recent executive orders seeking to stop the assault on public sector workers and the civil service. Per AFGE National President Everett Kelly:

“AFGE is filing suit with our partner union today to protect the integrity of the American people’s government. Together, we can stop the efforts to fire hundreds of thousands of experienced, hard-working Americans who have dedicated their careers to serving their country and prevent these career civil servants from being replaced with unqualified political flunkies loyal to the president, but not the law or Constitution.”

LUEL will continue to monitor the situation with workers in the public sector and calls on the Trump administration to cease its’ assault on workers’ rights.

The post Public Sector and Civil Service Fight Back Against Trump Regime appeared first on Labor Today.

In an interview with Fox News, Murray discussed how under Biden the cost of living has gone “through the roof” and how a week after inauguration over 10,000 of his union brothers and sisters were laid off from work after Biden’s executive order stopped the Keystone pipeline. This is marking a shift in organized labor from always backing the Democrats with many of the rank and file voicing their opinion for backing likely Republican candidate Donald J. Trump. After communicating with their leadership, Steamfitters Local 638 business manager Bobby Bartels listened and reached out to each potential presidential candidate but, according to Murray, he only got a response from Trump and Robert F Kennedy. “He has not received a single email or memo from Biden or his team,” says Murray.

“I will do whatever my members want me to do,” Bartels says in an interview with Fox News. He’s said that his members are concerned with illegal immigration, solar power, electric vehicles, and overall inflation resulting in higher gasoline and food prices. Especially after putting out a presidential poll with his union, he began to understand where his members stood concerning the election. While most building trade union leaders are satisfied with dictating to their members to vote for the Democrats, Bartels is sticking his neck out when communicating and sympathizing with the desires of his membership. To these unionized workers, having a secure country is more important than whatever good Joe Biden claims to have done for organized labor during his administration. In an interview with conservative commentator Tomi Lahren, Bartels iterated, “If I don’t have a country, a free country, I’m not gonna have a union.” This could mark the beginning of a shift away from organized labor’s uncritical support of the Democratic Party.

Major union leaders Shawn Fain of the United Auto Workers only endorsed Biden as recently as January of 2024 and Sean O’Brien of the Teamsters has said they will not be issuing an endorsement until after both party conventions. At the end of the day, both the Democrats and the Republicans represent big business interests as a part of the American two-party system. Neither party can fully represent the needs of working people and simultaneously serve the interests profiting off their labor. This presidential election may cause major splits in organized labor which could lay the ground for the development of a true anti-monopoly and pro-labor party here in the United States of America. With such a platform, the will of the American working class could be united and focused into the political system to perhaps enact pressure and progressive changes not seen since the campaign of Henry A. Wallace of the Progressive Party in 1948.

The post Labor Split Forming on Presidential Election appeared first on Labor Today.