Labor faces dark days unless we see the light

What’s worse than writing about Donald Trump – again – would be four more years of covering the terrible effects of another Trump presidency – especially on workers and organized labor.

Voters’ choice between Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and the leader of a failed coup (convicted of a felony) is an existential election. For democracy and for everyday working Americans, a Trump victory would have an extinction-level result.

Overall, union households didn’t support Trump in 2016 or 2020 (or this year). However, a surprising and sizable percentage of homes where union members live did: 43% in 2016 (to Clinton’s 51%), according to Roper; 40% in 2020 (to Biden’s 56%, also according to Roper); and now, 41% for Trump/Vance (to 50% for Biden/Harris), according to NBC News.

Unions and pro-worker advocates are trying to remind organized labor of the bread-and-butter stakes.

The AFL-CIO 11 months ago listed dozens of attacks on labor during Trump’s presidency, including threatening union rights (such as an all-out assault on government workers), stacking the NLRB with union-busting corporate lawyers, derailing the Labor Department’s overtime rule, failing to advance any infrastructure bill and to crack down on China dumping streel into the United States, giving tax breaks mainly benefiting the wealthy, agreeing to an anti-worker trade deal with South Korea, proposing $1 trillion cuts in funding for Medicare and Medicaid, and pushing double-digit cuts in funds for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Labor Department.

“Donald Trump and JD Vance will seek to protect the wealthy and corporations,” said Service Employees International Union president April Verrett. Vance “may portray himself as a working-class hero [but his] record tells another story.

“The truth is that Senator Vance’s loyalties lie with the Wall Street bankers and Silicon Valley billionaires who have bankrolled his political career,” she added.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader wrote an open letter saying, “Let’s look at your record, Mr. Trump. You and your Republicans in Congress have long opposed raising the paltry federal minimum wage frozen at $7.25 an hour. As President, you displayed your hatred of unions and weakened job-safety protections.”

Sharon Block, a former member of the National Labor Relations Board who teaches labor law at Harvard, said she expects Trump to turn “the levers of government” back over to business lobbies and conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation.

“He subcontracted those levers to the Chamber of Commerce,” she said, “and you could see that at the NLRB, at the Labor Department. There was just nobody that had any background or history in advancing the interests of working people.”

Gwen Mills, president of the UNITE HERE union, said, “The attacks that will come from the Trump administration will [force us] to play defense.”

Also, as troubling as bullying Trump actions, and his and his supporters threatening a civil war, is the firehose of false claims coming from their cult, from the Big Lie about the 2020 elections being stolen to campaign claims that are deceitful but inflammatory “red meat” to those susceptible to fear-mongering.

In fact,

* joblessness is at its lowest level in more than 50 years (U.S. Commerce Dept.) and prices are actually falling (Consumer Price Index). And in recent weeks, the economy’s 2.8% growth in the second quarter was good news, outpacing expectations;

* liberal columnist Paul Krugman said because news media tend to report on price hikes more than price drops, people have bad impressions, and he added that wages have increased faster than inflation;

* conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg is more blunt, writing, “Subjectively, perfectly valid arguments can be made that things are not going well or that they can or should be going better. But we're talking about objective judgments here, and objectively huge numbers of Americans are objectively wrong.”

* the nonpartisan Moody Analytics firm, which evaluates financial modeling, compared forecasts for the U.S. economy under a new Trump term and a Biden/Harris administration, and Moody’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi said reverting to Trump policies would be a “disaster” but continuing current policies would be “better for the economy.”

* marriages and births are up (according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention);

* violent crime is down more than 15% (CNN); and

* and U.S. troops aren’t at war

 

As far as military veterans and those who support them, moderate columnist Froma Harrop reported, “As for national security, Trump ran through five secretaries of Defense. One of them, Gen. James Mattis, said ‘Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us.’

“Flatter veterans as he tries, Trump can't hide his contempt for Americans who serve in the military. Asked in the debate about the crude things he's said on this subject, Trump lied about not having said them. It's true that Trump didn't want to visit the graves of American soldiers buried at Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France, saying, ‘Why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with losers.’ And it's true that he referred to the 1,800 U.S. Marines killed in World War I's Battle of Belleau Wood as ‘suckers’ and ‘losers.’

“The source of that quote? A retired four-star general.

“Trump went to Arlington Cemetery with then-Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly to see the gravesite of Kelly's son Robert, who was killed in Afghanistan. Trump surveyed the field of buried U.S. servicemen and told Kelly, ‘I don't get it. What was in it for them?’

“As president, Trump called former President George H.W. Bush a "loser" for being shot down as a Navy pilot in World War II. And his denigration of war hero John McCain, mocking the sacrifices he made was, simply put, disgusting.

“Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, said this about Trump: ‘The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it's more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”

Concerning overall national security, recognizing that Trump repeats Russian propaganda against the United States is revealing. Lt. General (ret.) Mark Hertling, who served for 37 years and commanded U.S. Army operations in Europe and Africa, wrote: “This is – to put it mildly – stunningly misinformed and dangerous.”

Others who worked in the Trump administration echo such judgment. Reportedly,

* Mattis also said Trump had the understanding of “a fifth- or sixth-grader,”

* Kelly, also Trump’s one-time White House chief of staff, called Trump “an idiot” and said he thought the president was “unhinged,”

* former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said Trump was an “idiot,” and

* former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron.”

 

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler wrote, “The idea that Donald Trump has ever, or will ever, care about working people is demonstrably false. For his entire time as president, he actively sought to roll back worker protections, wages and the right to join a union at every level.

“We are not buying the lies that Donald Trump is selling,” she continued. “We will continue to support and organize for the causes and candidates that represent our values.”

 

Here’s a link to the labor federation’s summary -

https://aflcio.org/press/releases/donald-trumps-catastrophic-and-devastating-anti-labor-track-record