Resolution #80A-25-03
Fighting the Trump Administration’s Anti-Union Project 2025 Playbook
As union members, we have joined together to build a better future for ourselves, our families, and each other. Those that came before us organized, mobilized, and even gave their lives to secure our right to take collective action to improve our working conditions. While the struggle has been difficult, we have shown that our unity can overcome the greed of those who want to exploit our labor to line their own pockets.
We are once again at a critical point in that struggle.
Each year corporations and wealthy individuals spend billions of dollars to elect politicians and hire lobbyists to enrich themselves at our expense. This spending accelerated after the 2010 Citizens United case, when a narrow majority of Supreme Court justices effectively ended limits on campaign donations. This was the first of many anti-democratic decisions by the Roberts Court that changed the fundamental rules governing American elections, concentrating even more power in the hands of a small group of monied elites.
As a result, too many elected officials on both sides of the aisle are beholden to the donors who fund their campaigns. Anti-union politicians have captured Congress, and Donald Trump has appointed a record number of billionaires and former hedge fund executives to key positions in his administration. These anti-union officials have worked to implement numerous policies proposed in Project 2025 that undermine our jobs and our rights.
They have acted quickly to dismantle the agencies that protect our rights, starting with the National Labor Relations Board.
Donald Trump fired NLRB General Counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, who was previously a CWA attorney and advocate. Her replacement immediately began withdrawing the policies she had put in place to level the playing field for workers who are organizing and bargaining contracts.
He also fired NLRB Board Member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the Board short of the majority it needs to make decisions. This situation left us unable to fully enforce our contracts in the face of corporate unfair labor practices.
These actions have given corporations a green light to retaliate against workers who are organizing, disrespect our collective bargaining agreements, and delay bargaining.
Donald Trump and his billionaire backers are ransacking federal programs, finding ways to redirect spending to benefit themselves and eliminating programs in order to fund tax cuts for corporations and the very rich. As a result, thousands of CWA members will lose their jobs and our communities will no longer benefit from the important work that we do to improve people’s lives.
CWA members have worked tirelessly for years to ensure that federal spending on building high-speed internet supports good jobs and reliable connectivity, and successfully secured strong labor standards and a preference for fiber under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Yet, in June, Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary, a billionaire Wall Street CEO, reversed those rules in favor of non-union satellite companies and low-road contractors after those companies lobbied hard for changes.
When CWA and other unions face resistance from employers in reaching fair contracts, we often make use of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which helps resolve challenging issues at the bargaining table. But an executive order from President Trump almost entirely eliminated the staff of the FMCS, effectively stopping the operations of FMCS to help workers secure contracts altogether.
Members of IUE-CWA Local 81206 and CWA Local 9413 support programs to help at-risk young adults develop skills and secure employment through the Job Corps program. In June, the Department of Labor attempted to end these programs effective immediately before being blocked by a court order.
In April, nearly 200 members of IUE-CWA Local 83761 in Louisville, Kentucky who assemble dishwashers, refrigerators, washers and dryers, and other home appliances at the GE/Haier Appliance Park facility received notices that they have been targeted for deportation. These members came to the country legally, to find safety and a better life. Now their lives are being endangered and their families torn apart in order to meet arbitrary and cruel deportation quotas set by extremists who thrive on creating fear.
IUE-CWA members who perform work on military contracts have had their work protected for years through a federal requirement under the Service Contract Act that, if a new contractor takes over a contract, the existing workers have the right to continue on the job if they so choose. But a new executive order issued in January eliminates those protections and puts their work at risk.
The massive budget bill that passed Congress in July put the jobs and livelihoods of CWA members across the union at risk. It made permanent tax breaks for companies that move jobs and money overseas, it includes severe constraints that will result in the cancellation of new manufacturing facilities in green energy, and it dramatically undermines our public sector and our health care system.
By shifting hundreds of billions of dollars in costs to state and local governments, the bill puts at risk the jobs of CWA members across the public sector.
CWA nurses and health care professionals have fought for years for safe staffing ratios to ensure that they can properly care for their patients. Yet, the budget bill delays a proposed rule enacting safe staffing rules for nursing homes until at least 2034, putting both the jobs of CWA nurses and support staff in those facilities, as well as the health of retirees who live in those nursing homes, at risk.
The legislation also cuts hundreds of billions of dollars from our higher education system. The bulk of those cuts involve taking away options for workers to repay student loans affordably. As a result, these cuts both risk jobs in higher education and also increase costs for CWA members in the public sector and working at non-profit organizations,
CWA members across the country working in higher education or medical research have faced delays and cuts to the federal grant funding supporting their research. This puts at risk not just their jobs, but the life-saving cures and scientific breakthroughs their work is designed to find.
CWA members in numerous states who work for state employment services offices have been fighting for years to protect their jobs and the quality of services that they deliver to the people of their states from the threat of privatization to low-road companies that underpay their workers and provide low-quality services. But in June, the Department of Labor issued a proposed rule that would eliminate the merit staffing requirements attached to federal workforce funding.
Members of the NewsGuild-CWA who work at Radio Free Asia, providing the only accurate news coverage available to many living in totalitarian dictatorships, saw funding for their work cut off by the U.S. Agency for Global Media in March.
The cancellation of specialized suicide hotline services for LGBTQ+ youth and young adults by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration resulted in the layoffs of over 100 members of CWA Local 1180 working for the Trevor Project.
Following an intense pressure campaign, Congress passed and President Trump signed into a law a bill eliminating federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. These funds have long supported the jobs of NABET-CWA and NewsGuild-CWA members at local public radio and television stations, so the total elimination of federal funding puts hundreds of CWA members’ jobs at risk.
Attorney General Pam Bondi made it more difficult for NewsGuild-CWA and NABET-CWA members to do their jobs reporting independently by making it easier for the Department to subpoena journalists to obtain confidential information about their sources and potentially harass journalists. Meanwhile, Department of Homeland Security agents have repeatedly pepper sprayed, tear gassed and harassed NewsGuild journalists covering public events.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem illegally cancelled the union contract protecting the rights on the job of over 45,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees. TSA officers protect the safety and security of CWA passenger service agents and AFA-CWA flight attendants, so undermining the job security and working conditions of those TSA agents in turn puts our members at risk.
RESOLVED: CWA stands united in support of the jobs and rights of all working people. We believe that the best way to improve our working conditions is through collective action. We will oppose any policies that undermine our ability to form unions and bargain contracts.
RESOLVED: CWA will join with allies to resist any and all attempts by politicians to hand more power to corporations by taking away our freedom to vote, to make our voices heard, and to have a say over the decisions that impact our lives.
RESOLVED: CWA will mobilize to elect candidates who share our vision for a better future for ourselves, our families, and our communities. We will hold politicians who support policies that benefit corporations and the very rich at our expense accountable by raising awareness of their anti-worker positions and working to defeat them at the polls.