'Tyranny of the bosses': How Musk plans to trample workers’ rights across the board

28 March

Billionaire Elon Musk, leader of Tesla, SpaceX and X.com and head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is making it clear that no federal government agency in the U.S. is safe from mass layoffs. The Trump Administration and DOGE are drawing criticism not only from liberals and progressives, but also, from some Never Trump conservatives on the right.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele, for example, are saying that while they are fine with fat and pork being trimmed from the federal government, the U.S. is facing a dangerous threat when vital experts — such as air traffic controllers, food inspectors and health officials — are being arbitrarily laid off.

In an article published by Salon on March 28, journalist James Hassett argues that the damage being inflicted by the DOGE layoffs goes way beyond putting so many federal employees out of work at once — it is an attack on workers' rights across the board.

"From arbitrary layoffs to intimidation tactics to targeted harassment," Hassett warns, "Elon Musk has brought the tyrannical practices of the corporate Americaworld to the federal government…. Musk has led his legally ambiguous 'Department of Government Efficiency,' known as DOGE, on a rampage across the federal services — an attack that resembles the ruthless cost-cutting of private equity acquisitions, or rather, Musk’s own disastrous takeover of Twitter."

Hassett adds, "With Trump's fawning approval, Musk is dismantling the American constitutional system, flouting federal law to purge perceived ideological enemies from the civil service and circumventing congressional authority by cutting off appropriated federal funding — and doing so in open defiance of the courts."

Describing Musk as a "corporate hatchet man," Hassett stresses that the DOGE head favors a workplace in which employees have few, if any, rights.

"Musk doesn't just bring Silicon Valley's 'disruptor' mindset to DC — he embodies the idea that the executive, whether a CEO or a president, should be the unbridled sovereign of his domain," Hassett explains. "A boss can hire and fire at will, cancel contracts and direct funding without any checks to his power. Now, Musk threatens to remake the federal government into a business — with the president as an all-powerful boss. Musk and Trump don’t just want the government to run like a business, they want to rule it like one. Welcome to the tyranny of the bosses…. It's not efficiency that Musk pursues, but authority."

James Hassett's full article for Salon is available at this link.

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