Working people continue to face daily assault. The economic and political attacks and repression against working class and oppressed communities and organizations have intensified as Trump’s second term has more clearly exposed the corporate rule in this country. Organized labor—barely one-tenth of the workforce today—is one of the last defensive bastions of the working class. Corporate executives, Republican, and corporate Democrat leaders know that if they destroy the union movement, they eliminate the last substantial obstacle to their greedy agenda. Workers are responding with strikes, new political insurgencies, and many other forms of mass fightback.
Neither of the two largest and most dominant political parties in the U.S. today are representative of or willing to stand for working people in this country. Biden and Democrats in Congress ended pandemic aid, allowing increases to the child tax credit and Earned Income Tax Credit to expire, pushing additional millions back into poverty. Biden maintained cruel immigration policies, crushed a potential rail strike, and expanded fossil-fuel drilling, despite running on being one of the most “pro-labor” candidates in the field for both parties. Rather than deliver for working people, the Democratic establishment thought they could rely on voters’ rejection of Republican extremism, which proved to be politically fatal.
Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election not because most working people agree with his racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric, but because he spoke more effectively to the real issues faced by working people today. Basic essentials of living—such as housing, food, childcare, education, and medicine—have become increasingly unaffordable as corporations squeeze working people for every penny of profit they can get away with. Republicans recognized this, taking advantage of peoples’ frustrations with Democrats, sweeping into the White House and taking control of both chambers of Congress.
The Republican campaign in 2024 shamelessly scapegoated immigrants and pitted non-immigrants against them. Democrats could have stood up to the lies that Trump and his cronies peddle about immigrants, whose labor built and continues to drive real production in this country. Instead, Democrats folded and joined in on the dogpile. Let us be very clear—immigrants are not to blame for the plight of working people in the U.S. The problem is the capitalists and billionaires who exploit the labor of all working people. UE stands firmly with non-U.S.-born workers.
Despite the political onslaught brought on by the Trump Administration, the remarkable upsurge of working-class organizing that rose in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic shows no signs of abating. We are seeing this in both fights in the shop, as union members take advantage of the leverage afforded by a tight labor market to press for higher wages, and on the new organizing front. In addition, 2025 had the largest May Day demonstrations in decades, organized by coalitions of labor unions and immigrants rights organizations, as well as massive ongoing protests against the right-wing assault on workers and against genocide and war. However, this upsurge has yet to find a coherent or consistent political expression, as our nation’s politics continue to be defined by increasingly sharp rhetorical divisions between the two corporate parties, neither of which is interested in uniting or supporting the working class.
UE locals have also been active at the state level in fighting for themselves. In early 2024, graduate workers in Locals 1466 and 1498 teamed up at the New Mexico state legislature to fight for their wages. When their employers claimed there was no money in their billion-dollar budgets for raises, workers decided to make the change themselves. They navigated the complex and confusing political landscape, created their own materials, and met with their representatives directly during the whirlwind 30-day legislative session. In doing so, workers won millions in state allocations explicitly for increases to graduate worker salaries. Local 1105, University of Minnesota Graduate Labor Union, won a campaign through the state legislature to expand their bargaining unit to include graduate fellows.
Indeed, public-sector workers are still fighting for their right to bargain collectively and are taking matters into their own hands at the state legislature. UE Local 150 members continue to advocate at the North Carolina state legislature for this right. Members organized their own political action day, speaking to their representatives about overturning the Jim Crow-era ban on collective bargaining in North Carolina and other issues that concerned them. They have coupled this with strong rallies at their workplaces, exemplifying the importance of participating in both political action and building worker power at the workplace. The fight for collective bargaining continues, particularly in the South, and UE stands firmly in support of winning collective bargaining rights for all workers.
UE members have also taken action in support of the union’s Green Locomotive Project (GLP), a campaign to create good union jobs through a just transition, address climate change, and clean up pollution in working-class communities near railyards. Local 1077 has been active in supporting efforts to win legislation in California to clean up railyards, and New Mexico Locals 1466, 1477, and 1498 wrote a joint letter to Congressman Gabe Vasquez, urging him to push the EPA to approve the waivers necessary for such legislation to come into effect.
As workers, we have the knowledge and skills to run society while billionaires contribute nothing, but profit from our labor. We must fight and organize independently from both major political parties in order to unite around our class interests. As UE, we should approach this in two major ways. First, recognizing the reality that workers need major changes as soon as possible, UE should push for reforms that are beneficial to the masses of working people. This includes (but is not exclusive to) the following: Medicare for All, canceling student debt and making higher education free, protecting and expanding the rights of non-U.S.-born workers, expanding the right to manufacture more green-powered locomotives and other products that will abate climate change, expanding the right to form unions and bargain collectively, and organizing for a federal minimum wage of $17 per hour and national rent control. Second, we should build upon the increasing willingness of the American people to vote for candidates who are independent of both parties to create a true political alternative, a labor party that can unite and speak for the working class. We need to engage other labor unions and work with allies who are already making efforts at electoral strategies independent of the two major parties.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 79th UE CONVENTION:
- Calls on the union at all levels to:
- Educate and mobilize the membership to carry forward a working-class political program;
- Support only lawmakers and candidates who consistently take concrete actions to defend working people;
- Mobilize the membership and work with allies to promote worker issues, including full collective bargaining rights for all workers, and to elect pro-worker candidates;
- Calls on locals and regions to contact lawmakers on key issues through petitions, letters, phone calls, emails, lobby visits, annual political action days, town hall meetings, rallies, marches, civil disobedience, and other means to win positive political change;
- Urges all locals to undertake campaigns to register members and their families to vote, including campaigns at the workplace, and to encourage participation in all elections, from the local to the national level;
- Encourages locals and regions to engage in local independent political action to ensure that all people are able to exercise the right to vote;
- Encourages UE regions, locals, and members to become involved in working-class movements for economic, racial, and environmental justice;
- Reaffirms our support for the formation of an independent working-class political party.