Portside

President Trump has cut hundreds of thousands of jobs from the federal work force, disproportionately affecting Black employees.

Unions are alarmed by the plan for the Federal Labor Relations Authority, saying it will give the president more power over the federal workforce.

The Trump administration has fired a majority of National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health staffers and is proposing severe reductions to its budget.

Rendering collective bargaining inapplicable to the vast majority of federal workers, combined with the administration’s other attacks on the civil service, would leave the federal workforce in its weakest position in a century.

The mass firings were part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump, a Republican, and billionaire Elon Musk to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy and slash government spending, which has invited a series of legal challenges.

The American Federation of Government Employees has strongly opposed the bills.

As it becomes increasingly clear what a second Trump presidency means, America's labor movement has positioned itself as democracy's strongest, most important and best-organized line of defense against a sweeping authoritarian agenda.

The Trump administration is telling agencies to ignore any provisions in their collective bargaining agreements with federal unions that would impede reductions in force (RIFs), as agencies take steps toward implementing their initial RIF plans.

“They’re after nothing more than the entire public sphere,” Chris Dols of the Federal Unionists Network told the Foley Square crowd. He urged other public-sector unions to join the fight and “make it unmanageable."

Musk’s attacks on federal employees and their unions aren’t just a threat to the specific workers in his current line of fire. They pose an unparalleled danger to every single American.