In its statement responding to Donald Trump’s deunionization of most federal workers — voiding existing collective bargaining agreements, canceling their right to negotiate new ones, and eliminating automatic deduction of dues from workers’ paychecks — the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades at first seems to pull no punches. “This may be the biggest attack on the Labor Movement in American history,” it declares. Looking back, it faults the labor movement’s inadequate response in 1981 to Ronald Reagan’s firing of striking air traffic controllers. Then it lamely urges workers to “fight back.”
Regrettably, that inadequate reply to Trump’s authoritarian assault is far from uncommon. While objecting to federal deunionization, the statement of the National Nurses Union, which represents members at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals, doesn’t even mention Trump. Nor does the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) or the Plumbers and Pipefitters. You would search in vain for a statement from my old union, the Transport Workers Union (TWU). Meanwhile, TWU warned its large New York local not to use Trump’s name in any statement concerning federal policy, such as on cuts in transit funding.
With this cowardice, these unions are apparently leaving themselves room to kiss the ring later on. After all, there were unions in Benito Mussolini’s Italy — they just had to toe the line when the Fascist representative in the workplace or the government ministry snapped their fingers. Or perhaps unions are concerned about upsetting Trump supporters in their ranks. Certainly, unions need to be educating their pro-Trump members, but they can’t do that if they are too afraid to even mention the president’s…
Auteur: Marc Kagan
