While workers have always faced a hostile legal environment in the U.S., that environment has become even more dangerous under the second Trump Administration. Within the first six months of taking office, Trump’s Department of Labor has waged a shameful assault on workers by proposing the repeal of 63 regulations that protect workers. One such repeal—to reveal the brutality of the proposals—would mean that employers would no longer be required to provide proper lighting for “inherently risky professional activities” such as construction and mining.
In the private sector, Trump’s administration poses existential legal challenges, and in the public sector, unprecedented rollbacks. Upon entering office, Trump immediately hobbled the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency in charge of union rights in most of the private sector. His white-supremacist, pro-billionaire administration appointed Republican lawyer, Marvin Kaplan, as the new chair of the NLRB and fired its pro-worker General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. Then, Trump made an unconstitutional and unprecedented move of dismissing NLRB member and first Black woman to serve on the board, Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the NLRB not only all-white male but also without a quorum and formally unable to issue decisions, including on unfair labor practice charges (ULPs). For UE’s graduate workers in particular, Trump’s moves spell trouble. For instance, Cornell University graduate workers, members of UE Local 300, are courageously fighting a federal case spearheaded by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a segregationist organization which challenges their right to recognition as workers, to have a union, and to enforce their union security provisions.
The legal threats currently faced by the graduate workers put them in immediate solidarity with public-sector workers—who have led militant struggles under hostile labor law for decades. While the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), overseen by the NLRB, provides private sector workers with a federal “bill of rights,” it remains silent on the issue of public workers. Thus, public sector workers in 39 states currently lack the legal right to strike. In the South, workers face Jim Crow era bans on collective bargaining, union formation, and striking—originally crafted to suppress organizing of the Black working class. For instance, in West Virginia public workers have no legal framework for collective bargaining; in North Carolina they are explicitly banned from collective bargaining; and in 2017 public-sector workers in Iowa lost almost all collective bargaining rights. These workers are thus leading the fight to improve labor laws—for where oppression reigns, resistance blooms. For example, public service workers in UE Local 150 got the UN’s International Labor Organization to rule that North Carolina’s ban on public-sector collective bargaining violates international human rights standards. In Eastern Virginia, municipal workers are organizing with UE to take advantage of a partial but historic repeal of the ban on their right to collectively bargain.
We need a complete reset of labor law in the U.S. Two laws currently introduced in Congress, while not sufficient, would be substantial steps in the right direction. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act—H.R.20), is a bill intended to strengthen worker’s rights and make it easier to organize and bargain. This bill has become a major focus in the broader labor movement, and many UE locals have taken action in support. The Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act (H.R.2736) is a bill which would set minimum standards for collective bargaining rights for public sector workers nationwide.
History has shown that in both the private and public sector, improvements to labor law have always been won by workers taking action in their workplaces and in the streets, defying existing law when necessary until politicians had no recourse but to address our issues.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 79th UE CONVENTION:
- Encourages UE members and locals to learn more about their legal rights and effective tactics by reading Preparing For and Conducting A Strike: A UE Guide, as well as Labor Law for the Rank & Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law by Staughton Lynd & Daniel Gross, among others;
- Directs the national union to develop a member education curriculum on labor law covering relevant state and federal law, protection for citizen versus immigrant workers, and updates on relevant legal developments;
- Calls on the union at all levels to:
- Join efforts to pass the PRO Act;
- Join efforts to pass the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act;
- Join any state legislation efforts to secure private and public workers’ right to unionize and strike—including the employees status of graduate workers;
- Develop creative strategies to use worker strike action to win concrete gains for workers while demonstrating the need for comprehensive labor law reform.