AFL-CIO On One Year Since Trump’s Union-Busting Executive Order
One year ago, President Trump ripped union rights away from nearly 1 million federal workers in the single biggest act of union-busting in our country’s history. The executive order was an all-out assault on workers and all who rely on the essential services they provide.
In the months that followed, the Trump administration expanded the executive order and proceeded to cancel the union contracts of hundreds of thousands of federal workers. The White House explicitly said it was to silence workers’ voices on the job—Veterans Affairs nurses, food safety inspectors, workers who ensure we have clean drinking water and care for our communities after emergencies and disasters, and more—in retaliation for their unions standing up to the administration’s illegal actions.
This order was among the most anti-worker executive actions ever taken by a president—and every single day of the past year, it could have been rescinded with a single stroke of the pen. Instead, the labor movement has used every tool in our toolbox to fight back for workers and essential services.