"Presidents Day Protest 4" by Mobilus In Mobili, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Unions and the workers they represent find themselves at a perilous moment in 2025. After a few years of hard-fought progress with the vocal support of the most pro-union president in modern American history, organized labor is again under siege from the White House and its hallelujah chorus of billionaire businessmen and corporate bosses. Put aside forever the empty, laughable rhetoric about a new populist Republican agenda. This President is leading a multi-front campaign to destroy unions, diminish worker protections, and roll back decades of labor rights.
From Washington, D.C., to Tallahassee, Florida, the assault on worker power and worker solidarity is goosestepping forward. President Trump has proven conclusively he is the most rabidly anti-union president since Grover Cleveland called out the U.S. Army to crush the American Railway Union’s strike against the Pullman Company in the summer of 1894. Yet even at this moment of peril, new opportunities to build worker power are emerging. In other words, the battle has begun, but workers can win the battle.
Trump Brings the NLRB to a Screeching Halt
He didn’t have to do it. After a small number of Senate Democrats vote against confirming Lauren McFerran to a new term as the NLRB’s chair, President Trump had clear sailing to nominate and secure confirmation for a Republican majority on the NLRB. He could have, and likely still will, appoint Board members who will seek to undo the historic work accomplished by the Biden Board and former NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. But Trump has a different plan: fire the first-ever African-American woman to serve on the NLRB, stop worker organizing, and spark a constitutional crisis.
Early in his second term, President Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox, an expert labor lawyer and champion of worker rights, who helped steer the Board toward fair interpretations and aggressive enforcement of the National Labor Relations Act. Trump plainly did not care that longstanding Supreme Court precedent prohibited the firing. In fact, that was part of his point. Trump wants to force the Supreme Court to reconsider that precedent and thereby dramatically expand his power. In a presidential two-fer, firing Wilcox also allowed Trump to effectively shut down the NLRB. Without Wilcox, the NLRB no longer has a quorum, and so cannot conduct the Board’s business.
When run properly, the NLRB vindicates workers’ right to organize. It protects them against employer retaliation. It wins reinstatement when they are illegally fired and secures back pay from lawbreaking employers. It guards workers’ pro-labor speech and collective action. And it does its best, while shackled by a seriously problematic legal regime, to force employers to bargain with their employees’ unions. Shutting down the NLRB slows or stops all these worker-protection activities. Workers’ organizing, collective bargaining, and exercise of their labor rights suffers a gut punch.
Of course, not all organizing happens through Board-administered elections. Yet, 2024 marked the largest number of union representation elections in a decade with workers winning at a historically high rate. It also saw the decade’s second largest number of unfair labor practice charges filed in one year. That’s how we know Trump firing Wilcox and shutting down the NLRB was no mistake --- it achieved his goal of getting government out of employers’ way and frustrating workers’ efforts to build power and enforce their rights. Even a right-wing, anti-worker, pro-management Board, while certainly bad for workers and worker power, could not accomplish those results.
Trump Seeks to Radically Undermine Federal-Sector Unionism
"Fed Up? Rise Up! Day of Action" by AFGE, CC BY-SA 2.0.
After the local government sector, the federal sector has the highest percentage of workers who are union members. Unions also represent tens of thousands more federal employees who are not members under federal sector labor law’s right-to-work regime. So, it stands to reason that the most anti-union president in modern history would launch an existential attack on federal employee unions. Trump must also despise the federal employee unions because they are, along with their union siblings, the most important, effective, and aggressive opponents of his efforts to slash the federal government and the services it provides to working families. Trump doesn’t like hearing “no,” and hates it more when the message is delivered by ordinary working people.
On March 27, 2025, Trump issued an executive order purporting to exercise his authority under federal-sector labor law to declare that roughly 75% of the federal government has “as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.” This designation allowed Trump to strip hundreds of thousands of federal employees of their rights to organize and bargain collectively. What are some of these critical national security agencies? The Treasury Department, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Food and Drug Administration, the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Health and Human Services Department, FEMA, the Department of the Interior, and the Agriculture Department. Just reading the list tells you that this executive order has all the validity of a Trump University degree. The Office of Refugee Resettlement? Trump suspended refugees’ admission into the U.S. on Inauguration Day. Yes, these agencies are vitally important, but not to intelligence, counterintelligence, investigation, or national security.
Remember, Elon Musk’s falsely named Department of Government Efficiency has been trying to fire tens of thousands of employees from these agencies and others by arguing that they are non-essential. Trump has called for the elimination, among other agencies, of FEMA, even though it made his list of agencies that should not have unions. Suddenly, these agencies and their employees are not only essential, they are essential to national security. Simply, this executive order and the tortured legal argument that supports it are thin veils covering epic union busting.
Of course, the federal employee unions have sued the Trump Administration, as they should. Any serious judge will agree that Trump did not have the authority to issue this executive order. Sadly, not all federal judges are serious. This situation, however, is very serious. Trump’s executive order is a worse act of presidential unions busting than President Reagan firing PATCO’s members, if only because it deprives many more workers of unions they desperately want and need. The PATCO firings invited the corporate assault on unions that continues today. Imagine the signal this historically unprecedented act of union busting will send to corporate America if it is allowed to stand. So, in addition to lawsuits, the labor movement and its allies held “Hands Off!” rallies around the U.S. to slam back at the Trump-Musk assault on federal workers, among other issue.
Trump is Dividing the Working Class
A central pillar of Trump’s anti-worker-power strategy is to fracture worker solidarity by stoking division between citizen-workers and immigrant laborers. Through aggressive, punitive, and frequently illegal deportation policies, the administration promotes the false narrative that immigrant workers are to blame for stagnant wages and job losses. Pitting workers against each other is a tried and true strategy for suppressing worker power that has been repeated throughout American history. This divide-and-conquer strategy undermines the inclusive, multi-racial, and multi-ethnic coalitions that have historically powered labor's greatest victories.
As the AFL-CIO’s Shannon Lederer and EPI’s Daniel Costa helped to explain, both citizen and immigrant workers are facing corporate exploitation. Immigration and immigrants are not the cause of working-class Americans’ economic or cultural problems. The real culprits behind wage suppression and worker exploitation are union-busting corporations, inadequate resources for labor rights enforcement, and legal regimes and other policy choices that favor capital and wealthy corporations over workers. At this perilous time when many unions are fighting for their lives, the labor movement is also forced to engage in the difficult effort to educate their members and the public about where the blame truly lies for America’s income and wealth inequality, stagnant real wages, and hollowed out middle class. It would be a tall task in the best of circumstances, and these are certainly not those circumstances.
Trump’s “Economic” Policies Will Weaken Labor Markets and Worker Power
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The wave of highly effective strikes during the Biden Administration were not caused by low unemployment and otherwise tight labor markets, but underlying economic conditions certainly helped. Workers are more likely to risk a strike or other collective action if they know there are good-quality jobs available should their employer illegally fire them. In addition, employers find it much more difficult to recruit replacement workers if their employees strike, which closes an avenue to continued operations in the face of a job action.
Yet, labor markets are slackening. The unemployment rate has already climbed from a low of 3.4% in April 2023 to 4.2% in March 2025. While the Federal Reserve projects an increase to only 4.4% in 2025, those projections preceded the economic chaos and Wall Street collapse caused by President Trump’s feckless and ill-conceived tariff campaign to punish essentially every American trading partner country. These tariffs will certainly raise consumer prices across a range of goods—including electronics, clothing, and industrial inputs—thereby imposing a regressive tax on working-class Americans. But it also risks radically disrupting supply chains that feed America’s manufacturing industries. The possibility of job losses is rising. Retaliatory tariffs imposed by other countries threaten to reduce U.S. exports, which also may lead to job losses in manufacturing, agriculture, and beyond.
Trump’s kamikaze tariff strategy exacerbated working families’ fears that have already caused consumer confidence and consumer expectations to crater. Consumers’ expectations in April 2025 about the economy’s future and inflation’s trajectory fell to record low levels not seen in 45 years. Small business confidence and global business confidence are also declining. These measures reflect more than a foul mood across America. When working families and businesses are uncertain and concerned about the future, they are less likely to spend. Consumer spending makes up two-thirds of the American economy. Similarly, employers are less likely to hire and increase wages. Job openings are already down by more than 900,000 over the last year. Hiring has also declined, even before Trump’s trade tirade. Families and businesses alike will hoard their money to guard against an unknown and potentially problematic future economy. Stock markets have lost trillions of dollars of value in April 2025. While Wall Street is not the real economy, families and businesses are, and they fear they could be next.
Slamming the brakes on consumer spending, business investment, and hiring will slow the economy and could lead to layoffs. It’s too early to know at this stage, but the Federal Reserve has already downgraded its projections of gross domestic product. Some GDP projections are even more pessimistic. Slower growth means less hiring, the potential for greater job loss, and the risk of rising unemployment --- in sum, a weaker labor market. As a result, workers may find it more difficult to strike or demand better conditions at the bargaining table. Employers may have more leverage to resist union organizing and bargaining demands. Tariffs, often touted as a way to protect American jobs, could instead contribute to a more precarious economic environment that weakens workers’ and unions’ power.
Trump is Not the Only Union Buster in Government
At the state level, conservative lawmakers are advancing policies designed to weaken or eliminate public-sector unions. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis and the Republican-dominated legislature passed legislation in 2023 that imposes harsh new requirements on public employee unions. The law mandates that unions representing teachers, public health workers, and other state employees maintain a membership rate of at least 60% or face decertification. Additionally, the law prohibits payroll deduction of union dues, which makes it harder and more expensive for unions to collect funds. DeSantis’s laws undermine unions’ financial viability and organizational strength.
Florida is not alone. Utah outright banned public employee collective bargaining for most government employees in 2025. Iowa and other states with right-wing governments are also looking for new ways to kneecap their public employee unions. These attacks are straight out of the Project 2025 union-busting playbook that is the new bible of the MAGA movement.
Even Before Trump, the Labor Movement was Struggling to Grow
These Trumpist attacks are landing at a time when organized labor was already finding it difficult to capitalize on its immense popularity. According to the Gallup Organization, unions were viewed favorably by 70% of the American people in 2024. A CNBC survey in 2022 found that 59% of workers across the U.S. and across all sectors say they support increased unionization in their own workplaces. Yet, after two years of modest growth in union membership in 2022 and 2023, union density and union membership fell again in 2024. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership dropped to just 10% of the workforce, highlighting the continued structural and legal obstacles to union growth, including aggressive employer opposition and law breaking, even before President Trump returned to power.
This decline underscores a grim reality: unions were struggling to grow even under more favorable national leadership. Now, with open hostility from the White House and widespread attacks from state governments, the pressure is unprecedented. The peril is greater than ever in the modern era.
The Answers Aren’t Easy, but There Are Answers
Labor’s current situation cannot be addressed with one solution or some technology doodad that uses artificial intelligence to conjure up new union members. But labor’s history and experience point to an essential truth: the only path forward is to organize aggressively and creatively while evading or smashing through the barriers erected by government, law, and employers. That means going where the opportunities are, building power from the ground up, and embracing bold new strategies. That’s easy to write and hard to do. But here are three starting places.
"May Day" by mollyktadams, CC BY 2.0.
First, union busting in some states should be met with aggressive organizing in other states and localities. Declines in state and local government union membership and density can be turned around, although it may require law changes, where possible. Virginia offers a potential near-term breakthrough. The state began allowing localities to permit collective bargaining for public employees in 2021, but uptake has been slow. The 2025 state elections could change that. If Democrats win the Governor’s mansion and retain control of both chambers of the legislature, the labor movement can and should demand they enact legislation to mandate public-sector bargaining rights statewide, including for state employees. In fact, a firm commitment from Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abby Spanberger should be a precondition for labor support.
In Wisconsin, the continued liberal majority on the state Supreme Court opens the door to ending Act 10, the 2011 law that stripped most public employees of meaningful bargaining rights. Legal challenges to Act 10 are gaining momentum, and a favorable ruling could restore collective bargaining rights to tens of thousands of public workers, reversing one of the most damaging anti-union laws of the past decade. Wisconsin and Virginia alone could account for tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of new union members in 2026 and after.
Second, unions can continue to harness Biden-era investments for growth. Even as federal labor policy takes a regressive turn, building and construction trades unions are seeking growth opportunities from the public investments made during the Biden administration. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) together represent hundreds of billions in new spending on clean energy, public transit, roads, bridges, broadband, and more. These projects are creating union jobs and opportunities for new organizing.
Building and construction trades unions are leveraging these investments to secure project labor agreements, apprenticeship programs, and community workforce standards. These efforts can serve as a springboard for organizing. The good news is that, so far, the Republican majorities in Congress have not moved to repeal the IIJA or the IRA. The bad news is that the Trump Administration is unconstitutionally withholding legally appropriated funds under the IRA, at least, and job losses have already begun. The benefits to Republican-run states and Republican congressional districts may allow these laws to survive, but not without a struggle and some pain.
Third, unions can innovate and create opportunities where the laws are not already stacked against them. One of the most inspiring and innovative efforts underway right now is the organizing of workers who were once thought unorganizable. In Massachusetts, Uber and Lyft drivers, with the help of the Service Employees International Union and the International Association of Machinists, won the right to organize and collectively bargain through a landmark state ballot initiative. This breakthrough challenges outdated assumptions about the limits of labor law and the feasibility of organizing online platform workers. New proposed legislation in California would allow rideshare drivers to organize and bargaining collectively, as well, despite Proposition 22 and past legal setbacks.
Organizing in the online platform economy is not the only innovation being tested by the labor movement. Worker centers, members-only unions (like the Alphabet Union), and public-policy-based strategies like the California Fast Food Workers Union continue to offer the promise of breaking new ground and organizing more workers. These models provide support, advocacy, and a sense of collective power to workers who do not yet belong to a traditional union. They represent the frontier of a more inclusive and resilient labor movement.
Conclusion
The American labor movement is under siege. President Trump’s second-term agenda, backed by an emboldened business community, threatens to dismantle hard-won worker protections and weaken the democratic organizations that represent workers in the workplace, the community, and politics. The challenges are daunting and the moment filled with peril.
History shows, however, that workers and their unions can rise up even in the darkest of times. From the depths of the Great Depression to the era of deindustrialization to the invention of new methods to deprive workers of their status as “employees” protected under law, workers have rebuilt power through persistence, creativity, and solidarity. There is no alternative but to organize—aggressively, strategically, and inclusively. That means fighting back at the federal level and in hostile states, growing in more favorable states, seizing opportunities where they arise, and building new models of worker representation for the 21st century. The peril is real, but so is the potential for a revitalized labor movement.
