FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) online interview with  Eric Blanc, assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, author of Red State Revolt: The Teacher Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics;  We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big . This piece has been lightly edited for space and clarity.

Eric Blanc: It’s hard to exaggerate the stakes of the fight right now around federal workers.There’s a reason that Musk and Trump have started by trying to decimate federal services and decimate federal unions, and that’s because they understand that these are blockages on their attempt to have sort of full authoritarian control over the government and to be able to just impose their reactionary agenda irrespective of the law. And they know that they need to not just fire the heads of these agencies, but they need to be able to have a workforce that is so terrified of the administration that they’ll comply even when the law is being broken.

And so they have to go out after these unions and break them. And in turn, the stakes for, really, all progressive, all working people, anybody who has a stake in democracy, are very high because this is the first major battle of the new administration. And if they’re able to mass fire federal workers despite their legal protections to have job protections, despite the reality that millions of Americans depend on these services—Social Security, Medicaid, just basic environmental health and safety protections—if they’re able to destroy these services upon which so many people depend, this is going to set a basis for them to then go even harder on the rest of society. So the implications of this battle are very high. It is the case, fortunately, that federal workers are starting to resist, but there’s going to need to be a lot more to be able to push back.

The basic response is straightforward, which is to highlight just how important these services are and to note that, far from having a massively expanded bureaucracy, the federal services, like most public services, have actually been starved over the last 50 years. The percentage of the workforce that works for the federal government has continued to decline for the last four decades. And so it’s just not the case that there’s this massively expanding bureaucracy. And if anything, many of the inefficiencies and the problems in the sector are due to a lack of resources and then the lack of ability to really make these the robust programs that they can and should be, and oftentimes in the past were.

So it’s just not the case that either there’s a massively expanded bureaucracy or that these services are somehow not important. The reality is that the American people, in some ways, don’t see all of these services. They take them for granted. They’re somewhat invisible. So the fact that, up until recently, planes weren’t crashing, well, that’s because you have federal regulators and have well-trained federal air traffic controllers. And so when you start to destroy these services, then all of a sudden it becomes more visible. What will happen if you stop regulating companies on pollution, for instance? Well, companies can go back and do what they did a hundred years ago, which is to systematically dump toxins into the soil, into water, and all of these other things that we almost take for granted now that are unacceptable. Well, if there’s no checks and balances on corporations, who’s going to prevent them from doing all of this?

And so I do think that there’s just a lot of basic education that needs to be put out there to counter these lies, essentially, of the Trump administration. For instance, the vast majority of federal workers don’t live in DC. This idea that this is all sort of rich bureaucrats in DC—over 80% of federal workers live all across the country, outside of DC. And just monetarily, it’s not the case these are people making hundreds of thousands of dollars, they’re making decent working class wages. Overwhelmingly, you can look at the data.

So we need to, I think, be really clear both of the importance of these services, but then also just to say it’s a complete myth that the reason that ordinary working class people are suffering is due to federal workers. It’s a tiny part of the federal budget, first of all, the payroll of federal workers. And if you just compare the amount of money that goes to federal workers to, say, the wealth of Elon Musk, there’s no comparison. Elon Musk, richest man on earth, has over $400 billion net worth. That’s almost double what federal workers, 2.3 million federal workers as a whole, make every year. So you just see the actual inequality is not coming from federal workers, it’s coming from the richest in our country and the world.

The example of the red state strikes are a prime indicator that even when you have very conservative people in power, in government, workers have an ability to use their workplace leverage and their community leverage to win.

And so in 2018, hundreds of thousands of teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona and beyond went on strike. Even though those strikes were illegal, even though these were states in which the unions are very weak, right-to-work states, and even though the electorates in all of these states had voted for Donald Trump, nevertheless they got overwhelming support from the population because they had very simple, resonant demands, like more funding for schools, decent pay for teachers, making sure that there’s enough money so that students can get a decent education.

These things cut across partisan lines in a way that, similarly, I think that the defense of basic services like Social Security and Medicaid today really does cut across party lines. And the tactics, then, that they used were, well, first they had to get over the fear factor, because these were illegal strikes, so they had to find ways to start generating momentum amongst teachers. They did things like really basic escalating actions like asking people to wear red on one day. So they didn’t start by saying, “Let’s go on strike.” They said, “Can you do this one simple action together? Can we all wear the same color on a given day?” And then they asked the community to come in. They said, “Community members, can you meet us after school on this day? We’re going to talk about our issues together. We’re going to hold up some signs. We’re going to provide some information.”

So they built with escalating action towards eventually a mass strike. And they used a lot of social media because they couldn’t rely on the unions as much. Social media was very important for connecting workers across these states, for generating momentum. And eventually they were able to have extremely successful walkouts that, despite being illegal, nobody got retaliated against. They won, they forced the government to back down and to meet their demands. And so I do think that that is more or less the game plan for how we’re going to win around Musk and Trump. You have to essentially create enough of a backlash of working people, but then in conjunction with the community, that the politicians are forced to back down.

The basic problem with more traditional, staff-intensive unionism is that it’s just too expensive. It’s too costly, both in terms of money and time, to win big, to organize millions of workers. And whether it’s on offensive battles like unionizing Starbucks or Amazon, or whether it’s defensive battles right now, like defending federal workers, if you’re going to organize enough workers to fight back, there’s just not enough staff to be able to do that. And so part of the problem with the traditional method is that you just can’t win widely enough. You can’t win big enough.

Worker-to-worker organizing is essentially the form of organizing in which the types of roles that staff normally do are taken on by workers themselves. So strategizing, training and coaching other workers, initiating campaigns—these are things that then become the task and responsibility of workers themselves with coaching and with support, and oftentimes in conjunction with bigger unions. But workers just take on a higher degree of responsibility, and that has been shown to work. The biggest successes we’ve had in the labor movement in recent years, from the teacher strikes to Starbucks, which has organized now over 560 stores, forced one of the biggest companies in the world to the bargaining table. We’ve seen that it works.

And it’s just a question now of the rest of the labor movement really investing in this type of bottom-up organizing. And frankly, there is no alternative. The idea that so many in the labor leadership have, that we’re just going to elect Democrats and then they’ll turn it around—well, Democrats are sort of missing in action, and who knows when they’re going to come back into power. And so it’s really incumbent on the labor movement to stop looking from above and start looking, really, to its own rank and say, “Okay, if we’re going to save ourselves, that’s the only possible way. No one’s going to come save us from above.”

Workers are best placed to understand each other’s issues. They’re also the best placed to convince other workers to get on board. One of the things bosses always say whenever there’s a union drive or union fight is, “Oh, the union is this outside third party.” And sometimes there’s a little bit of truth to that. I don’t want to exaggerate the point, but there could be an aspect of the labor movement that can feel a little bit divorced from the direct ownership and experiences of workers. But when workers themselves are organizing, oftentimes in conjunction with unions, if they really are the people in the lead, then it becomes much harder for the bosses to third-party the union because it’s clear the union is the workers.

 I think that the Biden NLRB was very good and it helped workers unionize. So the fact that we don’t have that kind of NLRB anymore is a blow to the labor movement. I think we just have to acknowledge that. That being said, it’s still possible to unionize. You don’t need the NLRB to unionize. The labor movement grew and fought for many years before labor law was passed. And even today it’s very ambiguous. The NLRB is sort of paralyzed on a national level, but on a local level you can still run elections. And so it’s not even completely defunct. And I think it’s probably still possible to use it to a certain extent.

But the reality is that the legal terrain is harder than it was. On the other hand, the urgency is even higher, and you still see workers fighting back and organizing in record numbers. I’ve been really heartened by, despite the fact that the legal regime is harder, you’ve had some major union victories just in the last few weeks under Trump. For instance, in Philadelphia, Whole Foods workers unionizeddespite Trump, despite an intense union busting campaign coming straight on down from Jeff Bezos. This was only the second time Amazon—because Amazon’s the owner of Whole Foods now—has lost a union election, and that was just a few weeks ago in Philadelphia.

And so it shows that there is this real anger from below. And I think that there’s something, actually, about the Trump administration, that because it’s so fused to some of the richest people on earth with the administration in an oligarchic manner, but then unionization itself becomes almost a direct way to challenge the Trump regime. Because you’re going up against both their destruction of labor rights, and then also, frankly, it’s just the same people are up top. The bosses and the administration are almost indistinguishable at this point.

I think that the Achilles heel of Trump and his whole movement is that it claims to be populist and it appeals to working class people, but in reality is beholden to the richest people on the planet. So the best way to expose that is by waging battles around economic dignity. And the labor movement is the number one force that can do that, and force the politicians to show which side they’re on. Are you on the side of Jeff Bezos or are you on the side of low wage workers who are fighting back? Waging more and more of those battles, even if it’s harder because of the legal regime, I think is going to be one of the most crucial ways we have to undermine the support of MAGA amongst working people of all backgrounds.

One of the reasons why the right has made the inroads it has is that it’s been better at getting its story out there and waging the battles of ideas through the media, through social media, and through more mainstream media. And frankly, our side has trailed. Maybe it’s because we don’t have the same resources, but I think it’s also there’s an underestimation of how important it is to explain what is going on in the world, to name who the real enemies are, and to provide an explanation for people’s real anger and their real anxiety about what’s happening. I think it’s absolutely crucial. And I think we need to, as a labor movement, as progressives, as left, really push back and provide an alternative explanation that all of these problems are rooted in the power of billionaires. It’s not rooted because of the immigrants, not because of the federal workers, not because of trans kids.

And I’ll just say that one of the things I find to be hopeful is that social media is being used pretty effectively now by this new federal workers movement, which is that they have a new website, go.savepublicservices.com, through which anybody can sign up to get involved in the local actions happening nearby. It’s going to be a rapid response network to stop all of the layoffs that happen locally, wherever you live, and to save the services on which we depend. So people can go to that website, go.savepublicservices.com, and take advantage of that media opportunity to get involved locally.

FAIR website, 2/13

  ​

In an opening shot of the new round of Republican attacks on workers and their unions, the Utah governor has signed into law a measure banning the state from engaging in collective bargaining with unions representing the state’s public workers.

The law, which goes into effect July 1, is a harbinger of the broader attack on workers’ rights and union organizing in the wake of Donald Trump’s access to the presidency this year. It follows Trump’s firings at the National Labor Relations Board, an agency designed to protect workers and union rights, making it incapable of functioning.

The law was denounced by teachers unions as well as other public workers’ unions. Renee Pinkney, president of the Utah Education Association, blasted it as an intention to “silence educators and their collective voice” not only on their ability to negotiate salaries and working conditions, but also to matters affecting students and classrooms. The association called it a  “blatant attack on public employees and our right to advocate for the success of our profession and students.”

Orly Lobel, the director of the Center for Employment and Labor Policy at the University of San Diego, said the Utah law was “a strong antilabor signal and is compounded with national pressures to reduce public spending on education and other public services.”

Coming along with Trump’s firing of officials at the NLRB that enforces workers rights in private industry, declared Sharon Block, the executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School, “states taking away the rights of the public sector workers to engage in collective bargaining, you get to a point where that’s an incredibly serious threat to the labor movement.”

NY Times, 2/15

Costco workers, represented by the Teamsters union voted Jan. 19 to authorize a strike beginning Feb 1 if they do not have a contract by then. The union represents over 18,000 Costco workers around the country.

Eighty-five percent of the union membership at Costco stores nationwide voted for the strike, according to the union. “Our members have spoken loud and clear — Costco must deliver a fair contract, or they’ll be held accountable,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a press release.

The wholesale giant recently reported $254 billion in annual revenue and $7.4 billion in net profits, which marked a 135% increase since 2018, the union said.

“Yet, despite these record gains, the company refuses to meet the Teamsters’ demands for fair wages and benefits that reflect the company’s enormous success.”

ABC News online, 1/20

President-elect Donald Trump’s designated appointment of Congresswoman Lori Michelle Chavez-DeRemer as Secretary of Labor in his incoming administration has been hailed in some quarters as an act friendly to labor. Others, however, were saying, “not so fast.”

Her labor-friendly bona fides come from the fact that she was only one of three Republicans in the House of Representatives who co-sponsored the pro-labor Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. The act was defeated in the face of Republican opposition.

But AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler was skeptical that it would mean that the Trump administration would be friendly to workers. “Donald Trump is the President-elect of the United States—not Rep. Chavez-DeRemer—and it remains to be seen what she will be permitted to do as Secretary of Labor in an administration with a dramatically anti-worker agenda,” noted Shuler. “Despite having distanced himself from Project 2025 during his campaign, President-elect Trump has put forward several cabinet nominees with strong ties to [anti-union] Project 2025.”

And Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, pointed out that it is the National Labor Relations Board that is charged with preventing union busting, not the Department of Labor. “During his first term, Trump appointed anti-worker, anti-union National Labor Relations Board members,” said Pringle. “Now he is threatening to take the unprecedented action of removing current pro-worker NLRB members in the middle of their term, replacing them with his corporate friends. And he is promising to appoint judges and justices who are hostile to workers and unions.”

As if to reinforce the perception that the Chavez DeRemer-appointment may be more symbolic than substantive, Trump quickly took pains to reassure the business community that his anti-union views have not changed. After business leaders expressed “alarm” at the appointment, he promised that he would pick a more “business-friendly” appointee for Deputy Secretary of Labor to run the day-to-day operations of the department.

In his first term, his appointees to the NLRB gave companies more time to fight unionization campaigns, more discretion over who gets overtime pay and more control over workers’ tips. He is expected to immediately fire the General Council, who has the authority to decide what sorts of cases the agency prosecutes. A new counsel there could work quickly to unwind cases including the agency’s recent efforts to hold Amazon.com Inc. liable for the treatment of its subcontracted drivers, whom the Teamsters are trying to organize.

Payday Report, 11/23Bloomberg News, 11/26

by Paul Becker

Labor leaders around the country are bracing for the onslaught against unions that they see coming in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential elections. Speaking of the election results, Lee Saunders, president  of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said, “This is going to impact the entire labor movement.”

UAW President Sean Fain sounded a defiant note,  declaring, “It’s time for Washington, DC,  to put up or shut up, no matter the party, no matter the candidate. Will our government stand with the working class, or keep doing the bidding of billionaires?”

Much of their apprehension comes from Trump’s performance toward labor during his first administration when he appointed anti-union operatives to government posts that oversee labor-management relations. For example, the Department of Labor cabinet post was created during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt to protect the interest of workers. Instead, Trump appointed Eugene Scalia as his Secretary of Labor. Scalia, son of right-wing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, had spent most of his career as a corporate lawyer fighting unions and used his new position to chip away at worker rights and protections.

And the National Labor Relations Board was created by the Wagner Act to protect the rights of workers to organize and engage in collective bargaining with their employers. Instead, his anti-union appointees handed down decisions that, among other things, allowed employers to delay collective bargaining elections, sometimes for years, while corporations illegally got rid of union activists and killed union organizing in their shops.

Public-sector unions, particularly teacher unions have special reason to anticipate an onslaught against them. Some of Trump’s top advisers want to eliminate them altogether. Project 2025, a wide-ranging document drawn up by a number of these advisers as a blueprint for the Trump administration, has proposed that Congress consider “whether public-sector unions are appropriate in the first place.” And Vivek Ramaswamy, who is likely to play a prominent role in the new administration, made elimination of teacher unions a priority in his campaign for the Republican nomination for president. He subsequently drew back only slightly when he said that he meant eliminating only collective bargaining rights for public school teachers. Some prominent Trump advisers have also called for the elimination of the federal Department of Education.

“There’s no doubt it’s an existential threat,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Also endangered are unions in the service industries that represent hotel and restaurant workers who are often immigrants who could be victims of Trump’s promise of mass roundups and deportations. In Nevada, the Culinary Workers union has raised the standard of living of many of these workers who are now threatened.

NY Times, 11/10

A recent NLRB ruling could have a major beneficial effect for Amazon drivers.

Millions of Americans today are ordering merchandise from Amazon, changing the manner of shopping for a large section of the American people as  trucks with the bent arrow are a ubiquitous presence in virtually every neighborhood. But even as they receive their goods delivered at the doorstep in quick time,  very few people pay attention to the working conditions of the folks who drive the trucks and deliver those packages.

In order to gain maximum profits from deliveries, Amazon has been resorting to a tactic now used by other companies – not treating their drivers as employees. Some companies like Uber and Lyft call their drivers individual business operatives, thus avoiding having to pay them health insurance and retirement benefits and preventing them, under current labor laws, from joining unions.

In Amazon’s case, it subcontracts deliveries to non-union companies even as it monitors, with cameras inside the trucks, the activities of the drivers and the pace of their deliveries. If Amazon feels that a driver is falling behind the dictated schedule, they report it to the subcontracting company for disciplinary actiony against the driver. Some drivers report having to work late into the night to complete their schedules. If the employees of one of those companies choose to unionize, causing an increase in delivery costs, Amazon simply will cancel its contract with the company.

But that might be about to change. The National Labor Relations Board’s regional director in Los Angeles has ruled, in a case involving a Palmdale, Cal. company, that Amazon is a joint employer of the drivers and must bargain with its drivers after they have started to join the Teamsters Union and petitioned for a union election. And across the country, a similar situation is occurring. Drivers at eight locations in New York City and four locations in Skokie, Ill. Have signed authorization cards with the Teamsters Union.

A court test is likely but if it is upheld, it will be a major step forward for the Amazon drivers and possibly for other workers who find themselves in this position.

NY Times, 10/10

Dock workers at Eat Coast and Gulf ports walked off the job Sept 30 after weeks of negotiations failed to yield an agreement between the International Longshoreman’s Association and the US Maritime Alliance, representing the shipping industry.

ILA members have been working under a six-year contract that expired Sept 30 and saw their real income deteriorate during the pandemic when many ports could not operate. The workers unload cargo from ships docked in the ports They are seeking substantial pay increases to make up for their losses and protection from automation severely cutting into their jobs.

Even though a major strike like this one could endanger Democrats just before election, President Biden has said he will not seek a Taft-Hartley injunction against the strike. “Ocean carriers have made record profits since the pandemic,” Biden said in a statement. “It’s only fair that workers, who put themselves at risk during the pandemic to keep ports open, see a meaningful increase in their wages as well.”

Politico, 2 items, 10/1 and 10/1

By an overwhelming vote of 95 percent, thousands of workers at Boeing walked off the job Sept. 13, turning down a proposed contract that had been negotiated between the company and the union’s leaders. The strike by 33,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers affects workers on the West Coast that produce commercial jet passenger planes, spacecraft, and rockets.

The industrial behemoth operates two large plants in the Seattle area that turn out the 737 Max, its most popular model, the 767 and the 777. The walkout closes down these factories and would also affect the supply chain to other Boeing facilities around the country, possibility causing them to shut down or sharply curtail operations as well.

The company has also been obliged to slow production of the 737 Max for quality control issues after a door panel fell off one of them during takeoff earlier this year. No one was seriously injured but, coming after the fatal crashes of two of the planes several years ago, production of the 737 Max was halted for two years.

The striking workers are trying to make up for concessions they have made in previous contracts. They are also seeking to restore the pension benefits they gave up in the previous contract, negotiated in 2008 and extended twice since then. In addition, they have been angered by Boeing’s decision four years ago to manufacture its new 787 Dreamliner at a non-union plant in South Carolina.

The last Boeing strike in 2008 went on for 50 days. If this one lasts as long, it could cost the company somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 billion. On the evening of the first day of the strike, a federal mediation service announced that it would convene mediation talks between Boeing and the union in a few days.

NY Times print edition, 9/14

Labor unions were very visible on the first night of the Democratic convention Aug. 19 with the leaders of over a half-dozen unions representing millions of workers took the floor to express their support for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in this year’s elections.

United Auto Workers union president Shaw Fain speaks to the Democratic National Convention on August 19. AFP via Getty Images)

Particularly notable was the speech by United Auto Workers president Sean Fain who recalled President Biden’s support of the auto worker’s recent strike and his appearance on their picket line. Auto workers remember that during their strike, Trump was addressing a rally called by a non-union auto shop on company time where workers were mandated to attend, and condemned the strike and the UAW. The strike meanwhile gained for workers at the Big Three automakers a record contract with gains they haven’t seen in decades.

Fain also pointed to the time when Harris, as a U.S. Senator, joined a UAW pocket line in a previous strike. “For us in the labor movement, it’s real simple.” he said. “Kamala Harris is one of us, she’s a fighter for the working class, and Trump is a scab.” While they pose as friends of workers, he and his VP nominee JD Vance are “lap dogs for the billionaire class who only serve themselves.”

And then, in an act of showmanship that drew a roar and enthusiastic applause from the crowd, he said “It’s getting hot in here,” and took off his jacket revealing a red t-shirt with the large inscription, “Trump is a scab.”

“The American working class,” he declared, “is in a fight for our lives.”

“We are going to build a younger, darker, hipper, fresher, sneaker-wearing labor movement,” said Service Employees International Union president April Verrett, whose union represents nearly two million workers. “A movement that is going to be more inclusive and built for the middle class, and we are going to end poverty-wage work once and for all,” she said, to loud approval from theDemocratic  Party delegates.

In her speech to the delegates on the same night, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed the former president as a “two-bit union buster.”

The Independent (UK), 8/20

Every year Amazon stages a Prime Day season, featuring big bargains for Amazon Prime members and big profits for Amazon. But what’s left unsaid is how much the speedup during those sale days takes its toll on the company’s workers.

A new report from the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions condemns the “outrageous injury levels during the Prime Day season. Amazon has a notorious record in violation of safety rules and worker injuries on the job. Normally, the ratio for the company in any given year is 10 for every hundred workers, more than twice the average for the industry. But during the Prime Days,. It jumps to 45 for every hundred, or almost half ofthe company’s warehouse workers.

The incredibly dangerous working conditions at Amazon revealed in this investigation are a perfect example of the type of corporate greed that the American people are sick and tired of,” said Senator Sanders, chair of the Senate committee issuing the report.

Despite making $36 billion in profits last year and providing its CEO with over $275 million in compensation over the past  years,”said Christy Hoffman, General Secretary of UNI Global Union,“this report confirms what we have heard from workers for years. Amazon drives its workers to the brink of physical collapse, causing unbearable wear and tear on their bodies, resulting in injuries and long-term damage. It is well known that to work at Amazon is to work in a meat grinder. It doesn’t have to be this way, The call for change is even more urgent as the planet overheats and record-breaking temperatures become the norm. Instead of resisting its workers’ call for a union, Amazon should sit down and negotiate fair – and safe- conditions, which includes an end to unreasonable production demands and comprehensive measures to protect their employees from the consequences of heat.”

Sanders emphasized the issue of chronic understaffing at Amazon warehouses, particularly during peak periods like Prime Day. He argued that understaffing leads to longer hours and increased workloads that puts workers at a higher risk of injuries.

This is not the first time that Amazon has been criticized for putting workers at risk. Last month, UNI Global Union unveiled a new survey which states that Amazon warehouse and delivery workers in India are enduring intense pressure and unsafe conditions while struggling to support themselves with insufficient pay. The report last month published by UNI Global Union in partnership with the Amazon India Workers Association (AIWA), examining the working conditions of Amazon employees in India comes in the wake of widespread reports of dangerous conditions at Amazon during the summer heatwave in and around New Delhi.

United States Senate; Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions, Committee; Bernard Sanders, Chair: Amazon Investigation Interim Report, 7/15