Statement of the UE officers
For over half of a century, working people in the U.S. have seen stagnating wages, worsening working conditions, the loss of good jobs, and constant increases in the cost of living. This is the result of corporations’ never-ending thirst to squeeze as many profits out of workers as possible. Throughout this time, both major parties have been complicit in this corporate assault. They have maintained their power, and a corrupt two-party system, by dividing the working class along lines of race, gender, and education. Frustration with the Democrats and their unwillingness to confront corporate power or offer real solutions to working people’s economic concerns led many working people to vote for Donald Trump on Tuesday, giving him the margin of victory.
While working people largely voted for Trump in the hope that he will improve the economy, Project 2025, the 900-page blueprint for a second Trump administration, will only worsen the economic problems working people face. One of the most dangerous political threats that the labor movement, and the working class, has faced in generations, Project 2025 proposes a variety of measures to weaken unions in the private sector, and bluntly states its objective to eliminate them completely in the public sector. It also seeks to weaken or eliminate virtually every law that protects workers, from OSHA to the minimum wage to laws against child labor.
Furthermore, we know from Trump’s first term that a Trump NLRB will seek to remove National Labor Relations Board protections from hundreds of thousands of graduate workers by classifying them as simply students, not workers, despite all of the paid labor that they provide to their universities. We also know from Trump’s history, and the rhetoric he has used throughout his campaign, that he will continue to demonize immigrants and encourage attacks on them — and we know that employers will take advantage of those attacks in order to silence immigrants who are union leaders.
Faced with these threats, the labor movement simply cannot afford to retreat into a defensive crouch as it did after the election of Republican presidents in 2001 and 2017. Our unions must be prepared not only to militantly defend workers, but also to lead a broad and militant social resistance to Trump and the Republican Congress. The policies that they will seek to enact, both legislatively and through executive branch action, will hurt everyone except the super-rich.
As the airport occupations in 2017, the mobilization to defend the Affordable Care Act in 2018, and the general strike threat in response to the federal government shutdown of 2018-19 all show, the anti-worker Republican agenda can be defeated, and the labor movement must step up to the plate and help lead such struggles.
The strike, labor’s ultimate weapon, will be a key part of working-class resistance to a second Trump administration. In the higher education industry, where UE is the leading union of private-sector graduate workers covered by the National Labor Relations Act, university administrators will be faced with a choice of whether or not to side with Trump’s attacks on graduate workers and immigrant students. Those who stand with Trump must be met with fierce resistance and militant action, including large strikes by majorities of workers. UE is prepared to engage in aggressive struggle to ensure that universities respect labor rights and that international graduate workers are not targeted. We call upon the entire labor movement to close ranks with this sector of the working class and any others that come under special attack.
Trump won because the Democrats have largely failed to clearly take the side of the working class, either while in office or on the campaign trail. While Harris claimed to be fighting for the “middle class,” she offered few concrete policy proposals beyond a vague claim that she would cut taxes. Had Harris campaigned vigorously on a platform of reining in corporate power, investing in green jobs, and providing universal healthcare, she would have given working people a more compelling reason to vote for her than simply opposing Trump.
Harris was also hurt by her unwillingness to condemn Israel’s year-long military assault on the people of Gaza, with a significant number of potential Democratic voters feeling that they could not vote to “endorse genocide.”
This election has demonstrated, once again, that the current two-party system is incapable of uniting working people around a vision for progress. We reiterate the position taken by UE’s General Executive Board in September: “Working people need an independent political organization to fight for our interests against the corrupt two-party system, and we call upon our locals and members, the rest of the labor movement, and our allies in other social movements to get serious about building a true political alternative, a labor party that can unite and speak for the working class.”
In the immediate future, the labor movement faces an existential threat. The most anti-union elements of our society will have the full power of the federal government at their disposal, and have made clear their intentions to destroy us. We must respond by uniting our membership and uniting our class; engaging in militant struggles, including strikes, to defend our rights and our unions; and leading a fight for a future that puts people over profits.
Carl Rosen
General President
Andrew Dinkelaker
Secretary-Treasurer
Mark Meinster
Director of Organization
[…] Originally published in Labor Today. […]