It is critical that we understand these threats and act quickly to stanch the bleeding because labor is one pro-democracy institution that has held firm through this most recent attack. Labor unions have been behind many of the highest-profile cases challenging the actions of the second Trump Administration, from its attack on federal workers’ civil service protections to the dubious creation of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to its aggressive immigration enforcement profiling farm workers and day laborers. When it comes to DOGE, labor has also sued to stop it from gaining unprecedented access to sensitive federal information systems, significantly reducing the federal workforce, and dismantling entire federal agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Department of Education. As the Trump Administration has grown emboldened to attack any sort of dissent and seek retribution against perceived enemies, organized labor’s willingness to protest legally questionable and harmful administrative actions is all the more important.
Indeed, organized labor’s display of backbone coincides with historic American approval of unions. At a time when the public is increasingly wary of all kinds of institutions, organized labor is bucking that trend. Gallup suggests that public approval of labor unions is approaching its post-World War II peak of 75 percent in the 1950s, and recent surveys have found that large percentages of workers would support unionizing their workplace if they could. Union win rates in National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections have soared to about 70 percent. President Biden proudly promised to be “the most pro-union President leading the most pro-union Administration in American history,” and took symbolic steps like releasing a video in 2021 encouraging workers at an Alabama Amazon facility to vote to join a union and walking a United Auto Workers (UAW) picket line—a first for a sitting President. He also pursued a robust agenda of pro-union policy initiatives through legislation, executive actions, and enforcement.
