Project Labor Agreements in the crosshairs of Trump administration

If unionized workers in the building trades would be asked who would oppose a construction project built on time by skilled workers earning decent wages and benefits without a work stoppage, most would know:

* employers who want to pay lower wages,

* companies who want to get by with fewer benefits,

* contractors without a labor contract, AND

* Big Business interests against unions generally, and specifically resisting the tool that guarantees the positives listed above: Project Labor Agreements (PLAs).

 

A new Trump Executive Order issued on March 14 targets PLAs by rescinding a September Biden Executive order that prioritizes spending for various actions benefiting workers. Biden’s EO sought to provide efficient project delivery by promoting positive labor-management relations through union neutrality in federal infrastructure investment projects and favoring equitable compensation practices and registered apprenticeship programs.

Besides rescinding Biden’s September EO (“Investing in America and Investing in American Workers”), Trump’s edict also revoked Biden’s March 6 order expanding the use of registered apprenticeships, a 2021 order to increase the minimum wage for federal contractors, and the 2023 order “Advancing Workers Empowerment, Rights, and High Labor Standards Globally.”

However, in addition to the labor movement mobilizing to defend PLAs, a new study focusing on Illinois’ use of PLAs provides some solid justification for continuing them.

Authorized under Sections 8(e) and 8(f) of the National Labor Relations Act, a PLA is a contract between a labor union or unions and a government or private entity that needs a construction project done. Before workers are even hired for a project, the two sides negotiate a PLA that sets wages, benefits, working conditions and provisions for resolving labor disputes to prevent work stoppages.

Nationally, PLAs have been used since the 1930s for government and private projects ranging from the Hoover Dam to Disney World, and the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993 upheld its constitutionality.

In Illinois, PLAs have been frequently used since 1992 and became the standard in 2003, when then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued an EO requiring a PLA in state construction projects if it “advances the state’s interests of cost, efficiency, quality, safety, timeliness, skilled labor force, labor stability or the state’s policy to advance minority- and women-owned businesses and minority and female employment.”

The General Assembly codified that requirement in 2011 when lawmakers passed the Project Labor Agreements Act.

White House EOs since the ’90s have varied from recommending PLAs to requiring them. But PLAs have been especially under fire in recent months.

Before inauguration, the AFL-CIO voiced concerns that Project 2025, the lengthy scheme coordinated by the Right-wing Heritage Foundation to remake the U.S. government, could upend labor relations in general and in particular policies that unions have found valuable.

“The labor chapter in Trump’s Project 2025 agenda, written by the chief counsel of Trump’s transition team and the head of Trump’s policy team at the Department of Labor, would eliminate public-sector unions, make it illegal for companies to voluntarily recognize unions, let corporations union-bust in secret and take away unions mid-contract, eliminate the Biden–Harris rules requiring Project Labor Agreements and Davis–Bacon prevailing wages on federally funded construction projects,” the labor federation predicted.

Several of those ideas already have been instituted or attempted, with Congress doing little to impede the dramatic changes, and courts slowly addressing actions’ legality.

Then, on Jan. 9, the non-union Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) and dozens of allied business interests wrote Donald Trump – before his inauguration – to ask for an EO essentially weakening or eliminating PLAs. Ten days later, Judge Ryan Holte of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled in favor of ABC and other contractors that filed a protest against the federal requirement to use PLAs on large federal building projects. His decision relates only to those employers, but it could  encourage other challenges to PLAs.

The near-term effect of Holte’s ruling may not be a death knell, said St. Louis attorney Chris Bailey.

“I suspect with the current administration reversing the Biden executive order, we’re probably going back to what we had pre-Trump’s first term, which was they may be used sparingly,” he told Construction Dive.

Amid the anti-PLA moves, however, a new report focusing on the state of Illinois’ use of PLAs says PLA foes are incorrect in their objections.

Analyzing seven years of Illinois’ Capital Development Board (CDB) statistics, “The Impacts of Project Labor Agreements on Costs, Competition and Contractors in Illinois,” from the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the University of Illinois’ Project for Middle Class Renewal, disproves common complaints from anti-PLA interests.

In Illinois, PLAs have increased bid competition, helped lower construction costs for taxpayers, and improved business for firms owned by veterans, women and people of color, say study authors Bob Bruno and Frank Manzo IV.

“The biggest finding in this report, and one that hadn’t been shown as much in other research or was unclear, is that Project Labor Agreements promote robust competition,” said Manzo, an ILEPI economist, who helped analyze 773 public building projects – 499 with PLAs and 274 without PLAs – from 2017 to 2023.

“The PLAs were linked with a 14% increase in the number of bids submitted by contractors seeking to win public building contracts,” Manzo said.

The report shows that, on average, most PLA project budgets come in 6% below initial projections, and PLAs help stabilize public construction costs regardless of a project’s size, complexity or location.

Further, the report clarifies that – unlike assertions by foes of PLAs – the agreements don’t mandate union labor. Instead, PLAs require the general contractor and subcontractors – whether union or not – to provide the same wage, benefits and working condition set in the agreement. In other words, non-union contractors can bid on PLA-covered projects, but they must follow union-scale wages and benefits.

An Illinois labor leader also stressed the importance of PLA workers existing and developing skills set.

“Unions have apprentices and built-in on-the-job training,” said Tim Drea, President of the Illinois Federation of Labor. “With a Project Labor Agreement, contractors can be confident in the training [that] workers receive because it comes from a joint contractor-union program.”

Manzo and Bruno’s report isn’t alone in its assessment of PLAs as a public-interest positive. Other studies for decades have defended PLAs or refuted opponents’ claims. A Harvard University paper in 2002 said that the increased-costs claim often cited by opponents of PLAs is not based on the final costs, but on bids. A Cornell University study concluded that there is no evidence that PLAs discriminate against employers and workers, limit the pool of bidders, or raise construction costs.

Now, however, the difference in the debate is a more sympathetic (anti-union) ear in the corporate-friendly, Trump-dominated Republican Party, and the GOP’s 53-47 majority in the Senate, and its 220-213 majority in the House.

 

The 30-page report can be read at https://illinoisupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/ilepi-pmcr-impacts-of-plas-in-illinois-final.pdf

Today is Workers’ Memorial Day – a solemn remembrance

Who knows what lurks in the dark hearts of those who’d exploit and endanger workers and their organizations? Diminishing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the weeks before Workers Memorial Day April 28 may have seemed a bit much for these power-brokers. So instead of a final, fatal attack, they opted for a piecemeal assault. While hardly stealth, the approach might have an outcome comparable to being “nibbled to death by ducks” (or by billionaires or collaborators or Twentysomethings with some tech savvy).

It still ends up in death.

Eroding OSHA rather than outright annihilation like too many federal workers facing job cuts or the elimination of agencies, the Trump administration has chosen to ignore the statistics.

At press time, the most recent data on workplace casualties, from 2022, shows that more than 3.5 million workers had work-related injuries and illnesses, with 5,486 deaths on the job – up from 2021. The numbers don’t include worker fatalities from occupational diseases, which the AFL-CIO estimates to be 135,000 annually. (The construction industry in particular is risky. Eight different building trades make up 8 of the top 25 list of “Most Dangerous Jobs” – roofers, ironworkers, delivery drivers, crane operators, construction helpers, highway maintenance workers, cement masons and construction workers,)

Already, OSHA for years has had an inadequate corps of inspectors, and though blue states might pick up some of the vital service, the number of federal inspectors – available to cover some 8 million workplaces –

is likely going to get depleted.

And now, Trump’s nominations for OSHA leaders could result in a new OSHA motto: “You’re on your own.”

Trump has named:

* David Keeling as OSHA chief. He formerly worked for Amazon, which has logged more than half of all U.S. warehouse injuries);

* Amanda Wood Laihow as senior counsel. She’s the ex-director of employment policy for the National Association of Manufacturers; and

* Michael Asplen as OSHA's senior policy adviser. He used to run a training institute for Littler Mendelson, a prominent employer law firm.

 

In the field, Elon Musk and his “efficiency” underlings on March 8 announced the termination of leases for 17 OSHA offices nationwide, and they added two more on March 24.

Meanwhile, reports and other documents have been purged from OSHA’s web site, some seemingly due to an outright anti-worker attitude and some because of the administration’s clumsy removal of all DEI-related language, such as diversity, equity, inclusion or gender.

Responding to Trump’s Executive Order, OSHA had to destroy the digital and physical copies of 18 publications on workplace safety, according to an internal February email obtained by the independent Popular Information news site. Censored material includes a Guidance Manual for Hazardous Waste Site Activities, Ergonomics Guidelines for Shipyards, and Best Practices for Protecting EMS Responders. The latter publication was apparently flagged because of the use of “diversity” and “diverse” in text – “a diversity of state-specific certification” and “diverse conditions under which EMS responders could work.”

A fact sheet on Workplace Mental Health also was deleted, presumably because of a sentence saying “People of any age, gender, and background can have thoughts of suicide.”

Peg Seminario, AFL-CIO director of occupational safety and health for 29 years, commented, “The Trump DEI purge is misguided, harmful, wasteful and wrong. It has purged important worker safety and health information and guidance that assists employers, workers, clinicians and safety and health professionals in understanding and identifying and protecting workers from serious hazards and complying with OSHA standards and regulations. The DEI purge makes workplaces unsafe and puts workers in danger.”

Likewise, the status of a rule that became effective Jan. 1, 2024, mandating record-keeping for employers with 100 or more workers is unclear.

An existing rule permitting independent observers such as union job-safety people to accompany OSHA compliance officers on inspections, is at risk, too, according to labor/management lawyers. This so-called walk-around rule, which went into effect May 31, can be valuable because “union experts are likely to find violations which bosses can pressure OSHA to conveniently ‘overlook’,” according to Press Associates reporter Mark Gruenberg. Chamber of Commerce lawsuit in Texas could block the rule.

A proposed rule to ensure employers minimize exposure to hazardous heat probably won’t be enacted.

In a related move – although not in the Labor Department like OSHA, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) within the Department of Health and Human Services – the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) didn’t escape the ax (however temporary OSHA’s reprieve may be).

Trump’s HHS Secretary RFK Jr. plans to eliminate about 875 jobs there, some two-thirds of NIOSH staff.

Part of the CDC since Reagan’s presidency, NIOSH conducts research and investigations, administers programs for nuclear veterans and World Trade Center survivors., certifies respirators, runs the National Firefighter Cancer Registry, studies child labor and mine safety, and maintains 18 Education and Research Centers, including the Great Lakes Center for Occupational Health and Safety at the University of Illinois - Chicago.

The drastic cuts will decimate the nation’s leading occupational safety and health researchers, according to labor reporter Mike Elk.

“Without NIOSH’s ability to investigate outbreaks and certify respirators, more health-care workers, firefighters, construction workers and others will get sick and die,” Elk wrote. “Sooner or later this country will face another pandemic and, as with COVID, workers will be on the front lines without the benefit of research to protect them. More workers will die of heat-related illness, and more miners will succumb to dust-related illness and other deadly hazards.”

AFL-CIO President Lia Shuler added, “Every worker should be able to go home safe and healthy at the end of their shift, but the Trump administration is gutting NIOSH, which will have devastating and irreversible effects on workers’ lives.  

“This action is a gift to corporations that want to slash worker protections to create more profits,” she continued. “It’s an insult to the workers who put their lives on the line at work every day and their families who wait for them to come home. The Trump administration must reverse this anti-worker, anti-health and safety action. We will fight until the work of this critical agency is restored.”

Finally, there’s the possibility of an outright repeal of the law – passed in 1970, during the Nixon administration. The Nullify Occupational Safety and Health Administration Act (“NOSHA”), introduced by U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), proposes the complete elimination of OSHA, using a “states’ rights” argument that private employers and states could take over the duties.

“This bill would be a catastrophic step backward for worker safety in this country,” commented Sally Greenberg of the National Consumers League. “Repealing OSHA would put workers at great risk by dismantling the very protections that have helped reduce workplace injuries and deaths for over 50 years."”

This year’s Workers Memorial Day must remember the sacrifices of the past – and also recognize the threats ahead.

The Other Migration

In the 1980s, cynics and other smart-alecks blasted Peoria’s economic prospects by quipping, “Will the last one to leave Peoria turn out the lights?”

Such a bumper-sticker attitude about Illinois is too common now, as too many media keep repeating the judgments that many people are fleeing the Land of Lincoln.

It’s a wonder there aren’t billboards asking 21^st century residents to leave their keys behind when they abandon the rests of us.

It’s confusing because sources often are ideological or commercial interests with stakes in complaining in general or moving in particular. Also, the assertion can be wrong or incomplete according to reviews by the U.S. Census Bureau and academic studies such as a recent report from the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Illinois Economic Policy Institute (ILEPI). Plus, such data is frequently updated to be current and reliable

It's too typical especially for mid- and small-market newsrooms to run with a summary repeating the told, tired refrain. Media stories chronically stress a “mass migration” angle, usually blaming property taxes, crime and housing costs (but very rarely winter).

Sources frequently cited are frankly suspect, such as the “Annual National Moving Study” released by United Van Lines or the yearly “Moving Migration Report” from North American Moving Services / North American Van Lines. That almost seems like the U.S. Surgeon General relying on advice from the tobacco lobby on the effects of cigarette safety, or the EPA seeking counsel on clean air from a coal company.

Also, political voices with vague names can offer conclusions that please their backers. Wirepoints, a conservative think tank that interprets Internal Revenue Service statistics, was used in a commentary on Illinois’ “exodus of residents” by Paul Vallas. The former CEO of school districts in Chicago, Philadelphia and News Orleans who twice unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Chicago, he’s now an “adviser” for the conservative organization Illinois Policy Institute. It promotes conservative points of view in guest essays and issues studies that are backed by contributors ranging from former Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Cato Institute to the Koch and Uihlein families, according to ProPublica and other news organizations.

Pushing perspectives in opinion pages is time-honored discourse, but in news stories it’s close to the unfortunate trend of exaggeration and misinformation, used less to inform or even convince the public of something than to shape people into doubting everything.

Population-loss stories can be incomplete, too, rarely including other factors that affect change, most notably birth rates. For instance, the most recent report from the National Center for Health Statistics says Illinois’ birth rate is 51.8 (an estimate of the number of children born to a group of 1,000 women), and 128,000 annual births. That’s 11% lower than five years earlier, when the birth rate was 57.5 and 144,000 newborns.

In 2022, the Census corrected its data to show Illinois had not lost population, but gained – to 13 million, a 2% undercount.

“This is really good news for Illinois,” Civic Federation President Laurence Msall told the Chicago Sun-Times. “So many of our formulas are based on population.”

The Census inadvertently missed 250,000 residents – akin to omitting Peoria, Fulton and Knox Counties entirely.

A year later, the 2023 UIUC-ILEPI study – a 26-page report titled “A Decade of Illinois’ Migration Patterns” [https://illinoisupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/ilepi-pmcr-decade-of-illinois-migration-patterns-final.pdf] – used information from the Census and the Illinois Department of Revenue to conclude, “Reports of Illinois’ population decline have been greatly exaggerated,” ILEPI economist Frank Manzo IV told Robert McCoppin of the Chicago Tribune.

“Data show the Illinois population has been stable,” he added. “Illinois is NOT suffering the mass exodus that some have claimed.”

In the report. Manzo and co-author Bob Bruno, a UIUC Professor in the School of Labor and Employment Relations and Director of the Project for Middle Class Renewal, say most people moving from Illinois were from downstate and had incomes low enough to be eligible for government aid, with less than half owning homes (and therefore not paying property taxes). The age group that lost the most residents was those 55 and older.

Bruno and Manzo’s work shows the quality as much as the quantity of people arriving in the state, too. From 2013 to 2022, new residents were better educated and reported higher incomes. The state had a 52% increase in taxpayers earning $100,000 to $500,000, and an 80% uptick in taxpayers earning even more.

“Illinois added more than 200,000 taxpayers last decade,” they say.

Bruno said, “People who move, whether into Illinois or out of Illinois, are more likely to be seeking upward economic mobility, either through job opportunities or educational pursuits. They are less likely to be concerned with things like the estate tax, property taxes, or the corporate income tax.

“It’s going to appeal to businesses, college graduates, people working in emerging sectors,” he continued. “That’s an optimistic view of where the state is heading.”

Last year, the state announced that the Census – which keeps updating its findings to be accurate – conceded another undercount – more than 46,000 people living in group homes. That surpassed the decline of 33,000 the bureau reported months before.

Besides neglected updates, overlooked subjectivity and ignored context, future concerns include whether the Census, the National Center for Health Statistics, the Internal Revenue Service – any federal agencies led by Trump loyalists instead of less political figures and civil servants – will be as impartial and forthcoming as they have been.

What Americans want isn’t what Trump’s doing

More than a crazy numbers game, the last couple of months in the new Trump administration has been chaos without rules, and human beings are affected, not numerals. Still, please excuse the reliance on the numbers to follow.

Locally, at press time, the un-elected, non-governmental “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) lists 24 federal spaces to be closed, including Peoria offices of the Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Attorneys, and U.S. Trustees. Also, the status of TSA workers at the General Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport is unknown, as are about 20 jobs at Peoria’s Ag Lab.

Similar cuts, probably illegal if not unconstitutional, continue.

Nationally, the stock market is volatile. The S&P 500 has lost more than $3 trillion in value since its all-time peak in February, Reuters reported; U.S. consumer confidence this winter dropped by 7 points to 98.3 (the largest monthly decline since August 2021), according to the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index; and MarketWatch said this is the worst start to a presidential  term since 2009, when the subprime mortgage crisis hit.

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, told the Washington Post that “business leaders, CEOs and COOs are nervous, bordering on unnerved, by the policies that are being implemented, how they’re being implemented and what the fallout is. There’s overwhelming uncertainty and increasing discomfort with how policy is being implemented.”

Historian Heather Cox Richardson added, “Government failure, stock market crash, and dictatorial alliances are not popular. People are starting to realize that there is no truth here beyond the desire for personal wealth and power.”

Indeed, few Americans signed up for what’s erupting from Washington, D.C., according to multiple public-opinion polls. We’re not the crazy ones.

What people actually prefer is dramatically different than what President Trump is trying to enact.

Generally, according to polls taken by CNN, Fox News, Gallup, NPR, Pew, Quinnipiac, YouGov and others, between 60% and 70% of Americans support Medicare for All, term limits for the U.S. Supreme Court, and legal abortion; 70% to 80% of us back labor unions, a higher minimum wage, student debt relief, higher taxes on the wealthy, money out of politics, and we believe the climate change is real; and more than 80% want free pre-Kindergarten and more gun control laws.

Yet, Trump is somehow emboldened by an imaginary “mandate” (his vote total was 49.8% compared to the 50.2% tallied by Kamala Harris combined with independent candidates), plus the Right-wing Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook, various compliant billionaires, and spineless people on Capitol Hill who in the 1940s might have been called “collaborators.”

However, only 35% of American adults say Trump is “honest and trustworthy” (Washington Post-Ipsos)

Here are other examples from polls in recent weeks:

* 82% of Americans favor deporting undocumented immigrants – but that’s if they’ve been convicted of violent crimes (AP-NORC).

* Just 29% of us support eliminating federal jobs (Associated Press-NORC).

* 52% of U.S. adults think Trump has gone too far in using presidential powers (CNN).

* 67% of us think cutting USAID funds will lead to more illness and death in low-income countries (KFF Health).

* Only 13% support Elon Musk’s influence over the executive branch (YouGov), and just 12% think billionaires should be advising the White House (AP-NORC).

* 28% favor changing the Constitution to end birthright citizenship (AP-NORC).

* In Trump’s bizarre foreign affairs ideas, 60% of Americans have “no interest” in taking over Canada (Angus Reid Institute); just 29% are OK with seizing Panama’s Canal (Reuters-Ipsos) and even fewer, 16%, support grabbing Greenland (also Reuters-Ipsos); and 68% view Russia as “unfriendly” or an “enemy” (NBC News|SurveyMonkey) and 52% of us support Ukraine in its war with Russia (CBS/YouGov).

* Just 20% support quitting the Paris Climate Agreement (AP-NORC), and a whopping 55% prefer alternate energy sources such as wind and solar to expanding oil and gas production (AP VoteCast).

* Concerning Medicaid, 40% of us want the funding to remain the same, with 42% wanting it to be increased.

* 83% of us opposed pardoning those convicted in the Jan. 6 insurrection (Washington Post-Ipsos).

* only 23% of us support restricting women from military combat (Scripps News/Ipsos).

* 72% of Americans view the Postal Service favorably (Pew).

 

Ryan Mac, who co-authored “Character Limit,” a book about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, has said that creating confusion is part of the point, asking, “What happens when there is unfettered capitalism that allows people to accumulate this much money and this much power?”

The American people aren’t the ones who are unhinged.

‘Fired up!’ to fight back

Early evening last month, a stream of vehicles entered the parking lot at the United Auto Workers hall in East Peoria, and within a half hour more than 100 people had showed up for a meeting of the Fired Up for Democracy committee. As unionists, veterans, Millennials and seniors took seats, the crowded gathering started to develop an air of collective resolve and joy – an inspiring blend of revival meeting, barn-raising and potluck dinner.

In some ways, the dozens of people, shrugging off their coats and visiting, mirrored similar actions from coast to coast, Americans are increasingly fighting the flood of actions from Washington D.C., with boycotts, protests, lawsuits all seeming to be having as impact. Popularity polls show Americans’ opinions of the new administration and its “adviser” Elon Musk dropping.

At the east-side table, Mari Osborne checks a computer, a colleague at her left elbow, and a screen behind her.

She’s ready.

After the November election, many felt deflated as well as defeated. Osborne says she was disappointed, too, but decided to do what she did when she worked some 30 years for Children’s Miracle Network.

Organize.

“We knew we needed to keep meeting,” she says, noting there was a time when she wasn’t very occupied in current events.

“I was happily not involved in politics,” Osborne says. “I started really paying attention when I heard a co-worker’s disgust that Obama was elected. I was really surprised – he wasn’t even sworn in yet, and people were already ‘hating’ on him. I was disappointed.

“I got involved with Tazewell County Democrats in 2019,” she continues. “I volunteered to organize the parades that we participate in. Speaking of parades: We need parade participants. You can walk or ride on the trailer. It’s a good time and good camaraderie with upbeat music and most of the people along the parade route are very friendly and welcoming.”

But now, this fourth meeting of the small-d democratic grassroots group – working with a growing group of activists from Peoria, Tazewell and Woodford Counties – is building on a handful of souls to take action

“It’s getting together and sharing ideas and just supporting each other,” Osborne says. “We have an amazing group of people coming together, opposing the new administration and the Project 2025 that they are slamming us with.

“So many newcomers!” she adds. “People want to do something!”

There’s a lot to do, they say.

Summarizing the first month of the new administration, In These Times magazine writer Luis Feliz Leon said, “Since taking office, Trump and his effective co-president Elon Musk have mounted a frontal assault on workers through executive actions, aimed at rooting out disloyal workers in the federal workforce, illegally firing members of the National Labor Relations Board, dismissing a member of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and threatening to freeze funding for health care, education, transportation and other services – while also conducting immigration raids that have ensnared U.S. citizens and stoked fears of racial profiling.

“Whatever you call it – a hostile takeover, a blitzkrieg – the effect is the same: Overwhelm workers and befuddle the opposition as billionaires carry out a rolling coup,” he continued. “In terms of union organizing, you could liken the volleys of attacks from the Trump White House to bosses holding the country’s working class in a massive captive-audience meeting, using shock-and-awe tactics to divide us up.”

Here, Fired Up get-togethers continue to concentrate on what can be done locally. An average 8 or 10 candidates or those thinking of running for office usually attend, Osborne says. And tonight, Jim Efaw from Woodford encouraged those considering seeking office to do so, and offered ideas – even for last-minute candidacies weeks before April 1’s local elections.

A key, he said, was to build a network, including labor unions.

“Unions are very supportive,” Efaw says. “You don’t have to be a union member. Just be sane … not anti-union.”

Fired Up is developing a program by focusing on voter engagement, precinct-level education and recruiting. and youth outreach.

“We’re training people to contact Congress to voice our concerns and thank those who stand with us.”

Other presentations range from building a core of volunteers, using social media like BlueSky and Instagram, and coordinating with groups with common interests, from national organizations like the ACLU, Indivisible and the League of Women Voters, to Tri-County independents and Republicans.

“We appreciate all the folks supporting this committee, including our union members and veterans – and Republicans who have had a change of mind and heart are welcome.”

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich recently said, “The battle of our day is no longer about Democrats versus Republicans or Left versus Right. The choice right now is democracy or dictatorship. And we're sliding faster than I ever thought possible into the latter. Everyone must choose which side they’re on. Now.”

Indeed, after Trump’s UN representative voted with Russia, North Korea and other Moscow-friendly countries against a resolution condemning Russian invasion of Ukraine and calling for the occupied territory to be returned, former Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman, an Air Force vet and National Security contractor from Virginia, said, “Make no mistake – the U.S. is now the bad guy. We are aligned with Russia.”

Here, good-guy Americans hold up each other. Collegiality blends with determination, and civility with humor (like Fired Up’s rousing singalong of “Runaround Sue,” with new lyrics about Trump).

“We want to keep pushing, keep getting stronger, and keep getting better,” Osborne says.

Elsewhere, although national GOP leaders told Members of Congress not to have town-hall meetings, some lawmakers are. U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who’s been in office since 1997, said that for the first time ever he needed an overflow room recently for one of his “coffee with your congressman” events, as about 700 people showed up.

“Something is happening in this country,” McGovern said. “People have had enough of Trump’s cruelty and lies.”

Last month, demonstrators protested at the office of U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood (R-16^th District) in Normal, and like-minded Illinois activists filled a meeting hall in Elizabeth (in Jo Daviess County) to discuss next steps.

In East Peoria on this winter night, emotions run the gamut: enthusiastic and despondent, hopeful and fearful, but Osborne remains ready.

And steady.

“We’re excited, I’d say,” Osborne says, smiling. “And optimistic.”

Osborne invites others eager to be Fired Up for Democracy to email her: Firedupci@gmail.com.

Unions face new threat from a familiar foe: Right To Work (for less)

An old labor battle has been renewed, emboldened by President Trump, “adviser” Elon Musk and the agenda favoring billionaires over working people: The revival of a national Right To Work law has returned like a zombie, eyeing a feast on a popular and reinvigorated labor movement.

A month into Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, the president had:

* fired, furloughed or forced thousands of federal employees to quit,

* fired National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo and Acting General Counsel Jessica Rutter,

* discharged NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the NLRB without a quorum and therefore unable to conduct business (which the courts recently found illegal),

* terminated two members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, also leaving it without a quorum.

* named Elisabeth Messenger, the head of an anti-union group (Americans for Fair Treatment) as director of the Office of Labor-Management Standards,

* appointed controversial safety and health chief at UPS, David Keeling, to head OSHA, and

* nominated ex-Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Labor Secretary.

 

Trump’s supposedly moderate Republican nominee for Secretary of Labor, Chavez-DeRemer once co-sponsored the PRO Act labor reform bill, but last month revealed her true self. In a hearing of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) asked if Chavez-DeRemer no longer backed the PRO Act language overturning Right To Work, and Chavez-DeRemer replied that she “fully” supported states that “want to protect their Right To Work.”

In the Nation magazine, John Nichols said, “With that exchange, Chavez-DeRemer marked herself as a more ardently anti-union nominee for Secretary of Labor than most previous occupants of the position.”

(The Philadelphia AFL-CIO Council was more direct, tweeting, “How very not pro-worker of you, Lori.”)

On Feb. 12, Sen. Paul and Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) introduced the National Right-to-Work Act (S. 533 and H.R. 1232) “to preserve and protect the free choice of individual employees to form, join or assist labor organizations, or to refrain from such activities.” 

In states with Right-To-Work (RTW), workers in unionized workplaces can opt out of paying union dues while still benefiting from the union's collective bargaining efforts, getting something for nothing since unions have a legal obligation to represent everyone in their bargaining units, whether or not they’re union members

Advocates claim that Right To Work laws attract businesses and create jobs, presumably because blocking unions from collecting dues to cover the costs of representing workers keeps unions weak or prevents workers from organizing – keeping wages low.

But when New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch vetoed a state RTW measure in 2011, the Democrat commented, “In my time as a CEO, in my years spent in the private sector turning around companies, and in my seven years as Governor, I have never seen the so-called Right-To-Work law serve as a valuable economic development tool.”

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), RTW states “have lower unionization rates, wages and benefits compared with non-RTW states.

“RTW laws are designed to diminish workers' collective power by prohibiting unions and employers from negotiating union-security agreements into collective bargaining agreements, making it harder for workers to form, join and sustain unions,” EPI’s 2024 study added. “Consequently, workers in states with RTW laws have lower wages, reduced access to health and retirement benefits, and higher workplace fatality rates. On average, workers in RTW states are paid 3.2% less than workers with similar characteristics in non-RTW states, which translates to $1,670 less per year for a full-time worker.”

The new bill would remove provisions in the National Labor Relations Act and court rulings letting collective bargaining agreements to contain “union security” language requiring workers covered by the contract to pay union dues or “fair-share/agency dues,” which are a fraction of dues covering union representation (not lobbying) for workers who decline to be union members.

 

RIGHT-TO-WORK BACKGROUND

Currently, 26 states have RTW laws, changes that occurred over decades.

In the 1930s, the Great Depression and labor unrest led to reforms in government policy, such as President Roosevelt’s New Deal, part of which eventually included the landmark National Labor Relations Act (NLRA, the Wagner Act). In Capitol Hill debates, the bill’s main sponsor, Sen. Robert Wagner (D-NY) “at no time suggested or contemplated that state legislatures could interfere with federal jurisdiction over union security,” according to Colorado state University researcher Raymond Hogler. Nevertheless, “the resulting corporate opposition to the NLRA was immediate, massive and unstinting.”

In the 1940s, anti-union legislative efforts spread throughout Southern states, using states’ rights and racism (plus support from the Ku Klux Klan) to pressure lawmakers or voters to pass RTW laws or state amendments. Ultimately, Congress in 1947 approved the Taft-Hartley Act, which prohibits contracts requiring employers to fire workers who refuse to join the union.

A key RTW figure was Vance Muse, “an oil lobbyist and outspoken racist and antisemite,” wrote Daryl Newman, Secretary-Treasurer of the Michigan AFL-CIO. “In 1936, he testified in front of a U.S. Senate committee that he was ‘for white supremacy.’ Muse warned via campaign literature that white and Black workers would have to call each other ‘brother’ or lose their jobs.

“What Muse and others realized was that racism in the workplace makes it harder for workers to come together in solidarity,” Newman continued. “By dividing workers along racial lines, CEOs and special interests could succeed in maximizing corporate profits by preventing workers, now infighting over race, from standing together to fight for better working conditions.”

The campaign spread from the Deep South.

“Muse led the efforts of ‘Christian Americans’ to pass state-level legislation to limit the growth and strength of unions,” said William Spriggs, a Howard University economics professor and economist for the AFL-CIO. “The movement went to Kansas in the 1950s, where the Right To Work movement was led by Fred Koch, a co-founder of the John Birch Society and precursor of the Koch brothers. Kansas passed its Right To Work law in 1958.”

Rand’s move is reminiscent of those ties between Southern businesses (promoting division in work forces rather that union solidarity), the Klan, neo-Confederate interests, and Right-wing groups such as the John Birch Society, Tea Party and, arguably, the MAGA GOP. (Past Republican leaders opposed RTW, including Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan.)

 

4a1      “Right-To-Work basically allows workers to use union services – including contracts which improve living and working conditions and defense against corporate greed, favoritism, exploitation and unfair discipline – without paying one red cent for them, in either union dues or fair-share fees,” explained Press Associates Inc. editor Mark Gruenberg.

4a2      “Right to work does have one policy consequence that can be confirmed by empirical analysis,” Hogler said. “Right to work causes union decline. Right To Work laws reduce the ability of unions to organize workers and to develop workplace institutions conducive to collective bargaining.”

 

 

ILLINOIS DOUBTFUL ‘SAFE HAVEN’

Despite Illinois’ Workers Rights Amendment, approved by voters in 2022, and state laws supporting workers’ rights, Illinois probably won’t be a refuge for Illinois unions.

“Under the Collective Bargaining Freedom Act (820 ILCS 12/15), Illinois has allowed private employers to enter into contracts with unions that require all covered employees to be union members,” said Peoria attorney Andrew McCall. “If Congress passes the National Right-to-Work Act, its supporters will contend that federal law displaces contrary state laws under the Supremacy Clause in Article VI, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. In addition, the Illinois law expressly references the scope of its compelled union membership as being to the ‘full extent authorized’ by the National Labor Relations Act, the very law that the National Right-to-Work Act would amend.”

“Right To Work does have one policy consequence that can be confirmed by empirical analysis,” Hogler said. “Right To Work causes union decline. [Such laws] reduce the ability of unions to organize workers and to develop workplace institutions conducive to collective bargaining.”

McCall sees legal challenges ahead.

“If the National Right-to-Work Act is enacted, we should expect lawsuits from unions that may raise a number of arguments, including that Congress exceeded its authority. Such arguments against the new law, however, will face their own challenges. In addition to the Supremacy Clause – which has federal law displace contrary state laws – the Contract Clause in Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution bars states, not the federal government, from passing laws that alter existing contracts. While this contested issue may well end up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, for private-sector employers and private-sector employees, it seems more likely than not that the Court would find this issue as a political one to be resolved by Congress rather than the courts.”

Illinois schools could be affected by weakening Dept. of Education

The Trump administration is reportedly drafting an Executive Order aimed at dismantling some or all of the U.S. Department of Education, and although Presidents cannot eliminate a federal agency created by Congress (like the DoEd, in 1979), Trump could try to cut its budget or staff.

So despite most funding for public education from pre-school through higher education coming from local taxes and state fundings, there are concerns.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker last month called federal assistance vital to families.

“If they take that away, that’s going to be highly detrimental to the people of our state,” he said. “So, I’m going to do everything I can to preserve that funding. I hope that that does not end up being a target of their attacks.”

The Department of Education has about 4,000 employees operating a $79 billion budget, helping students with special needs and children from low-income households, plus managing federal student loans and collecting and distributing research on learning, teaching testing and more.

Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect says targeting researching and reporting in the name of efficiency could be government removing pesky facts it would rather not disclose, from inflation and climate change to workplace safety and public schools’ “best practices.”

Silencing education could be disastrous.

“As a percentage of the current yearly federal budget of $6.8 trillion, axing those particularly targeted employees would reduce federal spending by roughly zilch,” he writes. “But if the ‘counting’ agencies are among those targeted for decimation, that ‘zilch’ can be promoted as constituting gazillions.”

Targeting DoEd is unpopular, too.

“Only 29% of Americans support abolishing the Education Department,” notes Urban League President Mark H. Morial. “In fact, nearly 70% of voters want to see education funding increased.”