By Gerry Scoppettuolo, District 65, Distributive Workers of America (retired)
Trump’s assault on the federal civil service, USAID, the Center for Disease Control, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the three Postal Service Unions is proceeding with Blitzkrieg speed. In a mere six weeks the Trump administration has effectively turned state power over to Christian white nationalists and billionaires. Elon Musk’s brazen Nazi Sieg Heil salute and J.D. Vance’s endorsement and meeting with Germany’s far right neo–Nazi AfD (Alternative for Deutschland) last month signal a danger to the entire global working class.
The biggest and harshest attack on labor issued by Elon Musk is the near total purge of federally protected and unionized civil service workers and their public sector unions, AFGE, APWU, NALC, NTEU, NFFE and AFSCME. These unions’ initial response to this purge was to go to the federal courts for relief. However, in at least one case the Trump administration has thus far refused to obey a court order. AFGE has already lost thousands of dues paying members, including 2700 VA employees. Cutbacks in clinical services at VA hospitals have happened including Boston’s VA hospital where daily clinics have been cut back to weekly clinics.
According to a comprehensive tally by CNN, as of March 9 over 100,000 federal employees have been terminated. Northern California District Court Judge Joseph Alsup has ordered the Trump administration to immediately release $2.5 billion in US AID funds, Trump has refused, and the judge has had to reissue the order, but the damage has already been done as many, if not most, of these workers have returned to the States. Lifesaving HIV clinics have been closed, surely causing many deaths. An interruption of but a few days in the daily dose of antiretroviral HIV drugs can render them useless, requiring new drug regimens.
It should not be forgotten that USAID has primarily been used to reinforce U.S. imperialist prerogatives in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Haiti, El Salvador, and countless other countries. Funding “soft coups” and a kind of “friendly imperialism” is just as effective as a military occupation. Most of USAID money has not even reached the intended beneficiaries, instead going to State Department stooges like Venezuelan coup plotters Juan Guaidó and Carlos Vecchio and the Avanti Group in Nicaragua. Nearly half a billion dollars has been stolen by these individuals since 2014 [source – Orinoco Tribune].
Here in the U.S. the American Federation of Government Employees, (AFGE), took to the streets to rally its rank and file and supporters on February 18 in many cities. Union members from the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) and the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) have also rallied. Rallies and pickets have been deployed in Davenport, IA, St Louis MO, Columbus, and Cincinnati, OH, Raleigh, NC, Louisville, KY and elsewhere. Attacks on these unions have brought forth grassroots organizing by the rank and file from the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), and the National Federation of Federal Employees (NEFFE). A new cross-union formation, the rank-and-file Federal Union Network. (FUN), as well as a remarkable insurgency in the very conservative National Letter Carriers union, called Build a Fighting NALC (BFN), are organizing rallies in cities across the country [source – Labor Notes]. The National Letter Carriers leadership has declared nationwide rallies for March 23,
It is no coincidence that the highly unionized Postal Service workers were the first to be targeted by billionaire Elon Musk and DOGE. Collectively, they represent over ¼ of all federal workers. [APWU (200,000), NALC (330,000), NTEU/IRS (150, 000) and NFFE, (110,000)]. Trump has stated his intention to bring the postal services under the domain of the Commerce Department, a first step to possible mass decertification.
This union busting is also racist as African American workers are disproportionately represented (27%) in the Postal Service which at one time was one of the few integrated employers in the Jim Crow era. However, it was resegregated by President Wilson in 1914 beginning with the requirement that job applicants submit photos to accompany the results of their civil service exams to identify their race.
As recounted by the Smithsonian Institute Postal Service Museum, segregation was quickly implemented at the Post Office Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. Many African American employees were downgraded and even fired. Employees who were downgraded were transferred to the dead letter office, where they did not interact with the public. The few African Americans who remained at the main post offices were put to work behind screens, out of customers’ sight. The segregation implemented in the Department of Treasury and the Post Office Department involved not only screened-off working spaces, but separate lunchrooms and toilets.
As of March 9, Federal employee unions and individuals have filed forty-one legal actions against Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and/or the Trump administration.
On March 5, the Supreme Court refused to grant Trump’s emergency appeal to block a lower court’s unfreezing of USAID funds, sending the matter back to the District Court. However, Trump may continue to flout Federal District Court rulings, igniting a constitutional crisis that could end at the feet of the anti- worker, conservative majority Supreme Court.
THE ROLE OF THE AFL CIO
The last wholesale firing of federal workers happened in 1981 when Ronald Reagan busted the Air Traffic Controller union, PATCO. Then, it took the AFL-CIO just six weeks to mobilize over a half million workers to march on Washington in protest on Solidarity Day- September 19, 1981. As of this moment it has been six weeks since Trump was inaugurated. No mass mobilizations like Solidarity Day has yet to be launched. A directive from top AFL-CIO leaders to the hundreds of Central Labor Councils across the country could ignite a broader mass movement to confront the danger of union- busters, billionaires, and white Christian supremacists. The 16 million union members along with the entire U.S. working class can step up to a world-historic opportunity to join other workers globally in common struggle.
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