Does anyone need more proof that Trump doesn’t give a crap about workers?

30 January

Donald Trump as he makes a campaign stop at manufacturer FALK Production in Walker, Michigan, U.S. September 27, 2024.

In his ongoing rampage against the laws of the land, Trump this week fired National Labor Relations Board acting chair Gwynne Wilcox — despite her congressional appointment not being up until 2028.

Wilcox’s firing closes down the NLRB, because it’s left with just two members, and the Supreme Court has ruled that the board needs at least three to issue any rulings.

Trump also fired NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, leaving board attorneys who investigate employee and employer complaints without any guidance.

Presto — American workers are no longer protected from illegal firings or unfair labor practices by their employers. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 is effectively gone. Employers can now wreak havoc on their workers.

Of course, most employers are already doing this, but at least the threat of unionization kept some from blatant bullying.

The backstory here is about power.

Score another one for the oligarchs.

Across America, big corporations are treating their hourly workers like shite. Unions are about the only countervailing economic force and one of the last remaining political forces pushing for worker health and safety.

But the latest data (out Tuesday) shows that unionized workers continue to lose ground — now down to under 10 percent of the workforce.

This suits the American oligarchy just fine. As I’ve noted, Trump is their frontman.

Elon Musk, the richest person in the world and a key Trump adviser — who over the years has compiled a truckload of violations from the NLRB, including firing workers who tried to form a union, and who kept his Tesla plant open during the pandemic in violation of state law — says he’s “opposed to the idea of unions.”

Billionaire oligarch Jeff Bezos, the second-richest person in America, who also stood prominently before Trump when he was sworn in January 20, has been waging an unrelenting war on Amazon’s warehouse workers. (When workers in a Quebec warehouse recently voted to unionize, Bezos responded by having the company order the closure of every Amazon warehouse in the province.)

Amazon owns Whole Foods. On Monday, workers in a Philadelphia Whole Foods market voted to unionize. Bezos is already taking aim.

An overwhelming majority of working-class people — especially men without college degrees, who form the bulk of hourly workers in Musk’s Tesla and Bezos’s Amazon — voted for Trump on November 5.

There are really two questions here:

(1) How much more proof does the American working class need that Trump is not on their side but on the side of the oligarchs, who are siphoning more and more of the nation’s wealth to themselves from everyone else?

(2) When will Democratic leaders and lawmakers have the backbone to tell this to working-class Americans, and come down firmly against the oligarchy?

NOW READ: Trump supporters finally finding out why you shouldn't vote for a criminal corporate raider

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

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