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.
The recent announcement of a ceasefire in Gaza is an initial, but tenuous, step towards a just and lasting peace in Palestine. Far more is needed, and it is imperative to keep pressure on the U.S. government to ensure that the ceasefire is made permanent, that reconstruction of Gaza is adequately funded, and that the Israeli government end its occupation of the West Bank and its threats and military aggression against other countries in the region.
On December 17, UE participated in two events in our nation’s capital that highlighted the urgent need for federal action on rail pollution. UE General President Carl Rosen delivered the keynote address at the White House’s Sustainable Freight workshop. Rosen spoke to the need for industry to step up and do more to clean up over-polluted rail yards and create good, union jobs in green locomotive manufacturing.
The nominally Democratic-controlled Senate yesterday failed to reconfirm Lauren McFerran as Chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Two Democrats-turned-Independents, Joe Manchin (I-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona), joined 48 of the 49 Republican Senators in voting no. Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas did not vote, and Independents Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine joined the 47 Democrats in voting yes.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate considered three “joint resolutions of disapproval,” proposed by long-time UE ally Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), which would have blocked U.S. sales of offensive weaponry to the Israeli military. The resolutions, in Sanders’ words, “are aimed at offensive weapons that have been used to devastating effect against civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. They would not affect any of the systems Israel uses to defend itself from incoming attacks.”
Statement of the UE officers on the election
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.
Israel’s recent strikes on Lebanon, which have killed hundreds of people including women, children, and paramedics, are exactly the type of regional escalation of hostilities that we predicted would happen without a ceasefire in Gaza. Right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government has faced massive protests including a general strike, is attempting to stay in power by expanding the war and killing additional innocent people.
Meeting in Pittsburgh this week, UE’s General Executive Board discussed the 2024 elections and adopted a statement declaring, “Working people desperately need an independent political organization, based on a political program that can unite us, which can fight for that platform in the electoral arena — in short, a labor party.”
In April, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for President, chose the Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. Vance has traded on his 2016 book Hillbilly Elegy and his working-class background to position himself as a “working man” who hates “elites” — and to win votes from working people who have been the victims of decades of corporate globalization. However, his actual life tells a different story.
In April of 2023, the right-wing Heritage Foundation published a 900-page document called Project 2025. In it, prominent corporate and right-wing operatives have created a comprehensive wishlist for expanding corporate power under a second Trump administration — and a detailed plan for achieving them.