Last week, we told you about Trump’s strategy to “flood the zone” by ushering in an endless parade of policy changes in an effort to totally overwhelm his opponents and hamper their ability to effectively fight back. It’s now week three of Trump’s second term, and unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably noticed that his flood zone has become something of a tsunami.
In the last few days, Trump and his administration have, among other things: barred transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports; voiced his desire for the US to control Gaza and make it the “Riviera of the Middle East;” put nearly the entire workforce of U.S.A.I.D. on leave; announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico, only to postpone them two days later; and gave Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to the Treasury Department’s payment system.
For this week’s Closer Look, we want to shine a spotlight again on a part of Trump’s flood zone that hasn’t received a great deal of attention but is nonetheless very important to our mission here at Patriotic Millionaires: unions. We’ll detail some of the harms that Trump has already managed to inflict on unions and workers’ rights, and also share some more positive developments that have come out of the labor movement in recent weeks that give us hope in weathering Trump’s storm.
On January 27th, in a widely anticipated move, President Trump fired the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Jennifer Abruzzo. Abruzzo was a Biden appointee who notched a number of wins for workers during her tenure – the most recent of which was a board ruling that outlawed “captive audience” meetings – and her dismissal is a great loss for the labor movement. Unfortunately, however, Trump didn’t stop there. On the same day, he also fired NLRB board member and acting chair Gwynne Wilcox, despite the fact that her appointment wasn’t slated to end until 2028. (Wilcox has since sued Trump, alleging that he overstepped his authority as president and violated Supreme Court precedent.) In so doing, Trump effectively shut down the NLRB, which now does not have enough members to issue rulings, leaving workers and unions without recourse to challenge labor right violations.
Outside of the NLRB, Trump also attacked unions last week by issuing a memo that invalidates government labor contracts finalized in the last 30 days before a presidential inauguration. This will affect a number of unions who rushed to negotiate new contracts before Trump took office in efforts to, for example, preserve remote work and protect civil servants from changes that could make it easier to fire them. The president may feel that those last-minute agreements “circumvent[ed] the will of the people,” but they were really intended to circumvent what federal workers rightly predicted would be the will of Trump and his administration.
Trump’s attacks on unions come on the heels of the release of a report from the Labor Department, which found that both the number and percentage of workers in the US represented by unions fell last year. Specifically, in 2024, 16 million workers were represented by unions, which was 170,000 less than in 2023. Further, 11.1% of all wage and salary workers are now represented by unions, which is lower than the 11.2% represented in 2023. 2024 certainly saw a lot of high-profile union wins – from Starbucks workers, to autoworkers in the South, to the Dartmouth men’s basketball team, and more – but the sad reality is that unions are still on the decline in the US. Aggressive union busting from corporations and the weak state of our labor laws have made it very difficult for those who wish to join unions – which, by one estimate, is no less than 60 million Americans – to actually make it happen.
There were, however, some more positive developments that occurred on the labor front since Trump was inaugurated that give us hope. Last week, workers at a Whole Foods Market in Philadelphia voted to become the first unionized store in the grocery chain, which has been owned by Amazon since 2017. Organizers sought better wages and benefits from their employer, but also hoped to start a movement and inspire other Whole Foods stores across the country to follow their lead – similar to what’s played out at Starbucks over the last few years.
Another encouraging development is that federal worker unions are already fighting back against the Trump administration’s incessant attempts to undermine their workforce. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), SEIU, and Alliance for Retired Americans sued the Treasury Department after it granted Elon Musk and DOGE staffers access to the federal payment system; news broke today that the unions were successful, as the Justice Department agreed to temporarily restrict DOGE’s access to the system. AFGE also sued the Trump administration over its “Fork in the Road” buyout offer to federal workers, arguing that it was unlawful for the Office of Personnel Management to give two million federal workers the option to resign and receive pay through September if they didn’t wish to comply with the return-to-office mandate.
We’re heartened by the fact that unions are showing their mettle – and their value – in the face of setbacks with the second Trump administration. Unions are an essential force to creating an economy that works for everyone, not just wealthy people like us. Research has found that union workers make roughly 20% more than their non-union counterparts and that union households also have 1.7 times more wealth than the median non-union household. They also have better benefits: while just 11% of non-union workers have defined benefit pension plans, 64% of union workers do. This shouldn’t be a surprise to most Americans, as roughly 70% of the country now supports unions, which is a six-decade high.
But the fact remains that, as we mentioned, unions are still on the decline in America despite the strong momentum behind them. If they are to regain a real footing in this country, lawmakers must do more to strengthen labor laws to make it easier for workers to join unions and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. They must also do more to deter corporations from lodging virulent union-busting campaigns.
Recently, one lawmaker has stepped up to the plate in this regard and, to our surprise, it’s a Republican. News broke last week that Missouri Senator Josh Hawley is looking for a Democratic co-sponsor for a bill that would force employers to negotiate contracts with unions in a timely manner. This is a major issue for unionized workers: it’s one thing to win a union election, but then companies deliberately drag their feet in first contract negotiations in an effort to demoralize employees and encourage them to give up their fight altogether.
It’s also worth noting that Trump’s pick for Labor Secretary, former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (OR-05), is being hailed as pro-labor. It’s a bit of a contradictory move from Trump and it’s unclear if she has enough support from Republicans to get confirmed at this stage, but we’re eager to hear how she responds to questioning when she appears before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee next week. It will make an enormous difference to unions and their growth if they have an ally – or, at the very least, not an active opponent – in Trump’s Cabinet.
Trump’s “first buddy” Elon Musk is opposed to the idea of unions and has even challenged the constitutionality of the NLRB. In 2023, he said, “It’s not good to have an adversarial relationship [between groups within a company].” What Musk fails to understand though is that when unions win, workers win. And when workers win, the whole economy – including rich business owners like him – win too. In other words, when it comes to unions, employers shouldn’t see it as an us-versus-them kind of thing, as their success is intricately tied with their workers’ success.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the last three weeks, it’s this: if America is going to build a strong and sturdy life raft to get to safer shores in Trump’s flood zone, it needs to be union-made.