By Fred Redmond
During the 2024 presidential campaign, now-Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought said he wanted to put federal workers “in trauma.” Project 2025 called union representation of government workers “incompatible with democracy” and recommended Congress make having a voice on a federal job illegal.
Now, as president, Trump has taken drastic steps to turn the Project 2025 agenda into a frightening reality. In addition to appointing Vought, he gave the world’s wealthiest person, Elon Musk, unfettered access to federal data and systems while his team of inexperienced groupies slashed core government functions and the workers who supported them—the more cruel and random the better.
Nine months into Trump’s second term, 1 in 8 federal workers have been pushed out of their jobs—about 300,000 in total, the largest single-year reduction since World War II. In March, the Trump administration stripped nearly a million federal workers of their right to collectively bargain in the single biggest act of union-busting in history. And then, right before Labor Day, added more workers to that list. Nearly 450,000 workers at the departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, have had their union contracts canceled altogether.
Attacks on federal workers aren’t just a problem for their families or their unions—they hurt all of us and jeopardize the essential government services we rely on daily. These workers make sure our food and water are safe and our communities are free from pollution. They protect our families during public health emergencies, care for our veterans, and monitor extreme weather and natural disasters. When workers can’t speak up on the job and make sure their offices are serving the American people, we are all at risk.
For Black Americans, Trump’s attacks on the federal workforce threaten to reverse decades of progress. In 1948, well before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, President Truman signed executive orders to abolish segregation in the military and prohibit race-based discrimination in the federal government. Government jobs became one of the few places Black Americans could put their education and skills to use and reliably get good benefits and pay in return, and for many, they opened the door to the middle class.
Today, that legacy is clear just by looking at the numbers. About 12% of the civilian workforce overall is Black—but Black workers constitute nearly 20% of the federal workforce. In some agencies—such as the Postal Service and the departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, the Treasury, and Veterans Affairs—we are 1 in 4 employees.
With more than 90% of federal workers living outside the nation’s capital, the effect of Trump’s attacks on the federal workforce spreads nationwide. This is especially true in the South, where Black workers make up 35% of the federal workforce in a handful of states, including nearly 45% in Georgia alone. Black workers are able to stay and build a stable career in these jobs; 21% of Black federal employees have worked in the government for 20 years or more. And Trump’s attacks are especially harmful for Black women, who themselves are 12% of federal workers, nearly double their share of the workforce overall, and work at some of the agencies hit hardest by the administration’s cuts.
By August, the unemployment rate was 6.7% for Black women and 7.1% for Black men—numbers not seen since the pandemic.
Behind these numbers are real people who are bearing the brunt of this administration’s anti-worker, anti-Black agenda. Nonpartisan federal workers, kicked out of the job they relied on for decades, now having to scramble to put food on the table for their families. Dedicated health care workers who have been champions for the care of their patients, now afraid to speak out without their union contract. Cherished colleagues and mentors pushed out of their workplaces by some arbitrary decision about which federal workers’ rights and jobs matter—and which don’t.
The labor movement is no stranger to attacks like these, and we’re not afraid to fight back. Federal workers have been organizing to join and remain part of their unions, even in the face of the Trump administration’s union-busting. They are speaking out and telling their stories, refusing to be silenced about why their jobs and their contracts matter. And we’re fighting to pass the Protect America’s Workforce Act, legislation that would overturn Trump’s union-busting executive orders. The bipartisan bill, introduced by Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine-02) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.-01), has 221 additional co-sponsors from both parties, and the labor movement and our allies are urging members of Congress to sign a discharge petition to send the bill straight to the House floor for a vote. Last week, Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced the legislation in the Senate.
Black workers didn’t become a major part of the federal workforce by accident. We organized and fought for these jobs and contracts with everything we had. If Trump and his billionaire buddies think they can take away our livelihoods and our unions without a fight, they don’t know the first thing about the labor movement. We’ll continue to push back against this affront to Black Americans—and all workers—with everything we have.
Fred Redmond, the highest-ranking African American labor official in history, is the secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, representing 63 unions and nearly 15 million workers.
