by Thomas A. Kochan
Editor’s Note: Following the recent Labor Day mass action nationwide, Prof. Kochan provides a timely report on the Trump administration’s multipronged attack on organized labor plus guidance for workers and unions on how to defend their rights. Indivisible and organized labor are allies in the struggle to retain our democracy.
Historians and philosophers have often asserted that labor unions and collective bargaining are “bulwarks of democracy.”
That is why unions and free collective bargaining are among the first democratic institutions targeted for attack by totalitarian leaders. This was true of Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany, and it continues to be true in Russia and China.
So we should not be surprised that attacks on unions and collective bargaining are a central focus of Donald Trump’s effort to destroy America’s democracy.
Destroying unions — America’s democracy under attack
Trump has eliminated collective bargaining rights for Transportation Safety Administration employees, arguing that collective bargaining is somehow “a threat to national security.” More recently, he cancelled contracts for over 400,000 other federal employees in the Environmental Protection Agency, Treasury, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Veterans Affairs, using the same dubious claim.
He shut down the National Labor Relations Board’s ability to enforce our nation’s labor laws by firing its chair. He decimated the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the agency responsible for helping labor and management reach agreements without strikes, resolving those that occur, and facilitating labor-management cooperation initiatives. His guidebook, Project 2025, suggests much more damage may be coming, given its stated goals to eliminate collective bargaining rights for all state and local government employees and make it harder for private sector workers to organize unions.
But the attacks go even further, violating well-established civil service rules and human resource management practices. He fired federal workers without any semblance of just cause. He rescinded the executive order in place since 1965 that held firms with federal contracts accountable for taking affirmative actions to ensure their workforces reflect the demographics of their communities and labor markets.
More broadly, his attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion strike at the heart of principles that human resource management professionals have lauded as necessary for attracting and retaining the talent employers need to compete for today’s diverse workforce.
Unions fight back
Unions are doing their best to fight these attacks by challenging them in the courts. This is a necessary defensive response, but it is slow and faces highly uncertain outcomes, especially given that the Republican-appointed supermajority on the Supreme Court has emboldened Trump by arguing that the Constitution calls for a “vigorous and energetic” president who can carry out the duties of that office “without undue caution.”
Strong defensive actions to block these attacks are only the first step. American workers need leaders — in unions and in companies — to go on the offense.
Many workers are already doing so by demanding a greater and stronger voice at work.
For example, a new national survey, the American Job Quality Study, found that a majority of workers in the United States want a stronger voice at work. Fully 69% of workers say they have less of a voice than they think they should have on wages and benefits, and 55% say the same thing with respect to how new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, are affecting their jobs.
Across the country, workers are striking or bargaining hard — including the baristas at Starbucks, the mechanics who build military planes at Boeing, and the food and beverage workers at Fenway Park — to gain a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work today and to ensure they will share in the benefits that new technologies might produce.
Unions can use collective bargaining to reinforce existing contract provisions that support diversity and equity in organizations. These clauses have been spreading across industries as diverse as health care, education, construction and retail. Expand them.
Do the same for demonstrating how collective bargaining can give companies and workers a step up in the effective use of AI by bringing workers’ voices and knowledge of their work into AI development and use.
Construction unions and contractors can negotiate continued support and use of project labor agreements to ensure labor-management cooperation and access to these good jobs by women and minorities.
If labor takes both defensive and offensive actions, it will meet its obligation to be a bulwark of democracy in this time of crisis.
Thomas A. Kochan is the George M. Bunker Professor of Management, Emeritus, at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a faculty member at the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research.
Join more than 100 organizations, including labor groups, for the October 18 No Kings 2 rally in a town near you. If there is no rally within an hour’s drive, organize your own. Bring your pro-labor sign!
