Contrarian - There’s a reason that taking out unions is one of the first pages in the oligarchic coup playbook – as in Chile, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Indonesia, Spain, Myanmar, and more. It’s the same reason Trump has fired the first Black woman member of the National Labor Relations Board, Gwynne Wilcox—clearly violating labor law and denying the board the quorum it needs to conduct business and protect employee rights; fired two commissioners of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; and asserted in an executive order that he can fire any member of the Senior Executive Service, which includes regional directors at the NLRB who run union elections and investigate and decide whether to prosecute corporations’ unfair labor practices.
It’s the same reason that Project 2025, which has informed the lion’s share of Trump’s early shock-and-awe actions in office, would effectively dismantle union power nationwide by banning public sector unions, eliminating overtime protections, and making collective organization nearly impossible.
And it’s the same reason Musk—who wants to make the entire NLRB unconstitutional and whose companies have been fined for millions of dollars for labor or workplace safety violations—is reportedly targeting the Department of Labor for the next round of DOGE sabotage. (Of course, Musk’s aims are twofold: defending his coup, and his very real interests in protecting Tesla and Space X from ongoing investigations into their anti-worker efforts.)
And it’s the same reason corporations and billionaires spent decades working to decimate union power in the United States. The reason is: Oligarchs know politics is about power, and they know strong unions don’t just deliver better wages and benefits for their members (though they do that in spades). Unions also build the kind of real democratic power—for all of us, not just union members—that keeps oligarchs in check. More
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