UE Locals Resist Trump Administration Attacks on Union Rights, Higher Ed, and Freedom of Speech

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

President Trump signaled his hostility to workers’ rights within his first weeks of office, taking the unprecedented step of firing a sitting member of the National Labor Relations Board, Gwynne Wilcox. This left the board without a quorum, and therefore unable to issue decisions. The UE NEWS pointed out at the time that this means that “Employers who break the law, or who simply refuse to bargain with their unions, will now be able to appeal any decisions against them to a board that cannot make a ruling.” (Wilcox sued, arguing that under long-established legal precedent, the President does not have the authority to remove employees at independent agencies like the NLRB. While two lower courts ruled in her favor, her case is currently at the Supreme Court, where the Trump-appointed anti-worker majority is likely to rule against her.)

This was just a taste of things to come. In March, Trump issued an executive order which effectively shut down the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and later that month began issuing 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, had seen its membership surge by tens of thousands of members — but was then decimated by the repeal of payroll deduction, much as anti-union legislation passed in Iowa in 2017 led to a severe loss of membership for UE’s public-sector locals there.

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 wrote 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 in mid-April when a whistleblower from the NLRB’s information technology department revealed to Congress and NPR that operatives from the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (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 was at the time 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.

Wreaking Havoc on the Federal Government

Beyond stealing sensitive data from the NLRB, DOGE has been wreaking havoc on the federal government’s ability to serve the American people. Through a combination of DOGE activities and executive orders, Musk and Trump have cut or threatened to cut federal funding to services and programs from healthcare and education to scientific research and environmental protection. They have also carried out mass firings of federal workers who do everything from administering Social Security to taking care of veterans, and have announced plans to privatize the postal service.

While some of these cuts and firings have been stopped, at least temporarily, by the courts, they have created widespread uncertainty, including among tens of thousands of UE members who depend on federal funding for their jobs in higher education, scientific research, and social services. Cuts to federal agencies and federally-funded programs hit the working class with a one-two punch: direct job loss as workers are laid off, and loss of the services that working people — and especially the unemployed — depend on.

While DOGE’s activities have created widespread chaos, they have done little to achieve their stated aim of cutting government spending. Musk claimed he would cut $1 trillion; according to a study by PolitiFact, DOGE’s “wall of receipts” amounted to savings of only $8.6 billion — less than one percent of its stated goals. And federal spending continues to rise, with total federal spending amounting to $594 billion in April 2025 — $27 billion more than the same time last year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

In late May, the House of Representatives passed a budget reconciliation bill by one vote. The “big, beautiful bill,” as Trump has styled it, makes clear what Trump’s and the Republicans’ priorities are — cutting services to the American people in order to pay for tax cuts for themselves and their rich friends. Alongside cuts to Medicaid, education, and other services, the bill also includes massive increases to the military budget, to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and to military aid to Israel, to assist with their brutal assault on the Palestinian people.

Attacks on Free Speech and Due Process

Trump, Musk and the Republicans realize that their program of taking from the working class to give to the rich and the military is unpopular with the American people, and so they are also launching attacks on the right to protest and organize.

The Trump administration has been detaining and deporting immigrants who are in the country legally without a shred of due process. The right to due process, which is guaranteed to all persons by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, is like the right to just cause in union contracts. It means that the government cannot “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property” without providing evidence and a fair hearing.

The administration is especially targeting international students and workers who have questioned U.S. support for Israel. (See the statement from the UE officers, “Attacks on Campus Protest a Grave Threat to Civil Liberties and Worker Rights.”) On March 25, six masked officers abducted Rümeysa Öztürk, a graduate student, university worker and union member, off the streets near her home in Massachusetts. The only justification offered for her imprisonment — which lasted until a federal judge freed her in May — was the fact that she signed an op-ed in the local newspaper.

Perhaps even more frightening, the administration has deported over 200 Venezuelans to a brutal prison in El Salvador which can only be described as a concentration camp. One of those imprisoned there — until he was returned to the U.S. in early June — was Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a member of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers union. While the administration has claimed that Abrego Garcia and other deportees are members of a violent Venezuelan gang, they have produced no real evidence to back up their claims.

Efforts to deport critics of the government, and union organizers, are not new. In the 1950s, the federal government tried to deport UE’s founding Director of Organization, James Matles, an effort that was only stopped by the Supreme Court, after agitation and mobilization by UE members and allies.

UE Locals Fight Back

UE locals have fought back. Beginning in February, UE’s higher education locals joined rallies and other actions demanding that Congress reverse the DOGE cuts to funding for scientific research. Speaking at a national press conference in Washington, DC organized by Labor for Higher Education on February 25, UE General President Carl Rosen said, “Cuts to research funding are a direct theft from working people for the benefit of the billionaires who are now running the federal government.

“It’s a theft from working people because thousands and thousands will lose their jobs. But it is also stealing a better future from all working people. A future where the research of today results in health care breakthroughs that can cure the illnesses that so many Americans are afflicted with. A future where the research of today can fix the poisoned environment that so many of us are forced to live in. A future where the research of today can help address mental health issues, drug abuse, and other problems that end lives too early in this country.”

UE locals have also joined actions denouncing the administration’s attacks on immigrants and demanding that their employers take action to protect workers. When Öztürk was abducted in March, Local 256 (MIT-GSU) mobilized their members to join an emergency rally denouncing the abduction and demanding her freedom. Later that month, after a member of Local 1105 (GLU-UMN) was detained, delegates to the Western Region council meeting held an emergency rally at the federal building in Minneapolis, and on March 31 Local 1105 co-organized a rally with AFSCME Local 3800 “to speak out against the university administration’s inaction in the face of a broad range of threats from the federal government against workers, students, and faculty.” 

In mid-April, UE’s new Graduate Worker Conference Board issued a statement urging colleges and universities to form a “Mutual Academic Defense Compact” to respond to the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on higher education. The locals also urged higher education institutions to establish a common fund to support international workers, who are particularly vulnerable to attacks by the Trump administration.

UE locals and members have also joined national days of action, including rallies against the dismantling of the postal service in March, “Hands Off!” rallies against cuts to federal services on April 5, and May Day mobilizations. Meeting at the end of May, UE’s General Executive Board endorsed the “No Kings” mobilizations scheduled for June 14, and as the UE NEWS goes to press, UE members and locals were making plans to join the more than 1,400 events planned across the country.