Since Donald Trump assumed the Presidency on January 20, he has issued a flurry of executive orders which will both directly cut living standards for working people and make it harder for us to organize and fight to improve our working and living conditions.
Trump was inaugurated surrounded by the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world. They had reason to celebrate — the world’s billionaires saw their wealth grow by $2 trillion last year, three times faster than in 2023. And with a cabinet full of billionaires, the new administration is poised to carry out a program of continuing to enrich themselves while dividing, repressing and bankrupting the working class. Our country is fast moving towards a more blatant and transparent form of oligarchy — rule by the super-rich.
On his first day in office, Trump appointed Republican Marvin Kaplan as chair of the National Labor Relations Board. The following week, he fired NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who had moved NLRB case law in a more pro-worker direction since she was confirmed in July 2021, and then, in a move of questionable constitutionality, fired Democratic NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox.
A Trump-appointed board and general counsel will continue the track record of the first Trump presidency, consistently supporting profits for bosses over rights for workers. We can also expect attacks on our union security clauses, whether through legislation or the courts — such as happened during Trump’s first term, when his first appointment to the Supreme Court proved the deciding vote in the Janus decision, stripping public-sector unions of their right to negotiate union security clauses.
Trump has given a prominent role in his administration to Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, a multi-billionaire with a history of vicious anti-unionism and support for far-right and neo-Nazi parties. Musk has been given co-leadership of a new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), which has tried to sell Congress on $2 trillion in spending cuts. Cuts of this depth are impossible without reductions to the spending required to maintain Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security at current benefit levels.
Regardless of whether Musk is successful in cutting a full $2 trillion, his new department will almost certainly pursue massive cuts to many social safety net programs, including health care, food security, housing, retirement, job-creating climate transition initiatives, and public education. President Trump has already begun ordering freezes on crucial federal aid to state and local governments, and funding for science research and nonprofit agencies that provide services to the American people, leaving thousands of UE members unsure if they will receive their next paycheck — or any paychecks — as of this week.
All of these steps will result in workers being laid off and cuts to the living standards of large numbers of working-class families in the U.S.
Trump’s imperialist foreign policy, with his threats of tariffs and annexations, are also making the world a more dangerous place for all working people, as he raises tensions with not only China but also the European Union, Great Britain, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, and many others.
Most threatening to the ability of workers to stand together and fight for what we need, though, are the efforts of Trump and his billionaire backers to divide the working class through attacks on immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, Black/African Americans, other people of color, and all who disagree with them.
Attacking immigrant workers hurts the entire working class, as employers take advantage of the fear caused by threats of deportation to undermine wages and working conditions, and weaken unions. And removing immigrants’ rights to due process — as the recently-passed “Laken Riley” bill does — threatens the very premise of “innocent until proven guilty.”
Despite the fact that Trump is entering his second term with an even smaller Congressional majority than he had in 2017, there are worrying signs that Democrats — nominally the “opposition party” in our two-party system — will not stand up to his corporate agenda. In January, 46 Democrats in the House joined the Republican majority in passing the Laken Riley bill, and 10 Democrats supported it in the Senate. Some Democrats also seem to be cozying up to the budget-slashing “DOGE” effort.
The fact is that the Republican agenda will not improve the economic situation for working people, and is, in fact, likely to make it worse. It is up to the labor movement, along with other working-class and popular organizations, and any elected political leaders that still stand with working people, to instead unite the working class to oppose the oligarchic agenda of the billionaires and corporations.
The labor movement will need to stick firmly to the basic labor movement principle that an injury to one is an injury to all. We will need to aggressively defend all of our members against attacks on their collective bargaining rights, their wages and working conditions, and their right to participate as full-fledged members of society regardless of their race, religion, immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity. We will need to clearly lay the blame for the ongoing cost-of-living crisis on corporations and the oligarchs, and both political parties which enable their greed. Labor needs to demand a positive economic program on behalf of the whole working class. And in addition to fighting for justice in our own country, we will need to continue to challenge our government when it pursues unjust foreign policies.
The actions of Trump and his billionaire supporters have already begun to generate popular resistance, and we can expect to see more. The labor movement needs to play a key role in channeling that anger into an effective fightback. And in order to best fight for a better future for working people, we will need to develop a political organization, such as a labor party, that is independent of the Democratic Party.