Unions face extinction under Trump. What the hell is labor doing to fight back?

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Everett Kelley:

My name is Everett Kelley. I am the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees [AFGE], representing 820,000 federal and DC government workers.

Maximillian Alvarez:

President Kelley, thank you so much for sitting down and chatting with us today. We’re here at the Netroots Conference in New Orleans in August 2025, and there’s a lot of really dark stuff going on in the country right now, including really critical stuff that has to deal with your union, your members, and our democracy.

I wanted to start there because we’re talking just days after the 9th Court of Appeals lifted the injunction on President Trump’s executive order to strip collective bargaining rights for union government workers at 21 agencies. And that has now been lifted, and as of this week, the attack on collective bargaining for government workers is in full force, starting with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Your union was the lead plaintiff in the case challenging that executive order. I was wondering if, for our viewers and listeners, if you could walk us through that fight and tell us where the hell we are now and what this is going to mean for workers and for all of us who depend on federal workers?

Everett Kelley:

Well, first of all, thank you for having me here with you today. I must say, this has been the darkest seven months of my life. To see federal employees have to go through what they have gone through for no apparent reason other than, simply, retaliation.

It’s very unfortunate that the Supreme Court has lifted the injunction. However, what I am grateful for is that they did not rule on the legality of the issues. It gives us an opportunity to still litigate whether or not the president has the right to strip federal workers of their union rights, and also the First Amendment rights. So we are able to continue to litigate that.

I always say it’s been dark in some areas. We’ve lost some battles, but the ultimate goal is to win the war. And I think that we are on track to do that because we still believe we have a strong case.

But with the Supreme Court’s action, it has given the president the thought that he has unfettered authority. And the result of that, just this week, the secretary of the VA issued a letter to myself and to the council leader stating that they were repudiating the bargaining contract. In other words, they said that we’re not going to recognize a legal binding contract.

Now, that’s outrage for the members that I represent, and it’s going to affect the American public because it’s not just an attack on the workforce, but it’s also an attack against the veterans that have served this country. And that’s what people need to understand, because we stood against things such as the 83,000 RIFs [Reductions in Force] that was planned in the VA, and this is retaliation because of the embarrassment that the secretary received [as] the result of that. And so, they’re trying to retaliate against the workers and against AFGE.

But this is what they need to understand: We’re not going no place. We are going to continue to fight, and we are going to win this battle ultimately, because the American people understand now, clearly, what’s happening, OK?

Maximillian Alvarez:

So, as you mentioned, Doug Collins, head of the VA, said in that statement that “unions that represent VA employees fight against the best interests of veterans while protecting and rewarding bad workers.” I wanted to give you a chance to just respond directly to that charge.

Everett Kelley:

Let me read that again. I’ll just read that one more time. I just want to think about that. But that we are not working in the best interest of the veterans, it’s so far away from the truth. Think about this. To say, I want to shut down clinics across America, that’s working against the interest of a veteran in my opinion — But it’s not the union that said that. It’s the union that stood up against that. To say that we want to cut out 83,000 jobs, that’s not in the best interest of the veteran — But it’s not the union that said that. It’s not the workers that said that. It’s the administration that said that. So who’s working in the best interest of the veteran?

It’s clear as [inaudible]. This administration don’t care about the veteran because they know that any type of action like this goes directly against the veteran because the people that I represent, they are proud to serve the veteran, and they do it with honor. And so to make that type of statement, it’s just a ploy to turn direction off of the real issues.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I was wondering if you could say a little more for folks, we’ve been interviewing federal workers at different agencies since the new administration came in and started firing people, getting people to voluntarily resign. It’s been a bloodbath, frankly. And we’ve talked to VA hospital nurses who are already overworked and under-resourced, understaffed, who are now facing these cuts telling us that we’re going to have to meet more demands from our patients with fewer people, and we’re not going to have the union protections to raise concerns about working conditions that are preventing us from giving the best quality of care. And that’s just one example across so many different agencies.

So I wanted to ask if you could say a little more for our viewers and listeners how this is impacting your members in the VA and beyond. What are people going through right now? And can you impress upon people who maybe are still thinking that, look, oh, government workers, union workers, they’re protected, bureaucratic institutions that don’t serve us. Could you tell folks your life does depend on a lot of the work of these workers, even if you don’t know who they are?

Everett Kelley:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that is a very good question because the image of bureaucrats working in Washington DC is just so far away from the truth. Only 15% of the federal workforce work inside of DC. The rest of the 85% work throughout America, and they are providing services to the American people every single day.

For instance, the people that inspect and process your food, they are federal employees, these are your neighbors, these are your relatives, these are your football and soccer coaches that coach our children. These are the people that make sure that the air we breathe is good air, the water we drink is good water. These are the EPA scientists. These are not bureaucrats. These are not lazy individuals. These are people that are highly educated, highly skilled individuals that want to provide a service for the American people. These are people that make sure that the war fighter has what he or she needs on the battlefield.

When you start looking at the Department of Defense that they say they want to cut about 60,000 employees there, and American people are the ones that’s going to feel the brunt of these attacks on federal employees. When those services are not there, the American people will suffer.

When you look at the Social Security Administration, these are the people that are processing the beneficiary claims. And when they’re not there to readily get this work done, American people are going to suffer.

So they are cutting in an attempt to make it harder for federal employees to perform their job because that way they can say, you know what? I’ve told you that the government doesn’t work, so we need to privatize. This is the key. We need to privatize these government services. And guess what? Now the billionaires that have supported this administration now get rewarded. That’s the bottom line.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Why are unions such a threat to this administration? Because that was their argument, that unions and collective bargaining agreements pose a direct challenge to President Donald Trump’s agenda. And unions like AFGE have been speaking out forcefully against the authoritarianism that has taken over this country and lead attacks on workers and workers’ rights. But why is it so important for this administration to take away those collective bargaining rights, not just in an employer sense, but in a political authoritarian sense? Why do they see unions like AFGE as such a threat to what they’re trying to do?

Everett Kelley:

That is a good question. The bottom line is that unions like AFGE hold the administration accountable. This regime does not want anyone to hold them accountable. They only want people that will be loyal to them. They only want people that will tell them exactly what they want to hear. That’s why you see what happened at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The person came forward with a true assessment, did that job appropriately, but yet they got fired, because they don’t want any accountability whatsoever.

And AFGE will always hold people accountable, whether it is the manager at the local agency, or if it’s the secretary, or if it’s the president of the United States, we will hold people accountable, and we will make sure that the American people know the truth.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So, I know you’re a very busy man and I got to let you go in a minute, but I wanted to zoom out for a second because a lot of union workers and non-union workers watch The Real News, and we cover labor struggles and working class struggles across the board, from working-class people living in sacrifice zones where they and their children can’t live healthy lives because of all the industrial pollution. We talk to people brutalized by the police and prison systems. We’re talking to communities of workers who are being terrorized by ICE.

So, I say that to say that, taking in the broad swath, we’re in a real dangerous place in this country, and unions are one of the only institutions that we have for working-class people to independently organize themselves and fight back.

What is it going to take for the labor movement to really meet this moment with all the force that it needs and with the broad, united front? Because 10% union density is not going to, we don’t have enough union workers to lead that charge with unions alone, but what role do you see unions playing in leading that charge to build United Front or working-class people against this onslaught?

Everett Kelley:

That is a very good question because it’s my opinion that we as a union, especially in the federal sector, have to reimagine this moment and how the union fits into this moment. We have to reimagine and restructure in almost every aspect of our union because this is a different moment. This is a different environment than what we’re used to.

And so, we are going to have to recalculate and reimagine the way we do business, the way we organize. We’ve been working with various groups that’s working with us to show us and talk to us about how do you really reimagine and restructure AFGE to fit the moment? Because this is not yesterday. This is not 10 years ago. So we have to think in terms of, OK, this is 2025, and where do we see ourselves five years from now and 10 years from now?

And that means that we have to reimagine. We have to look at every single aspect of AFGE: the way we organize, the way we get our dues. And we’ve done, in my opinion, yeoman’s work in that arena because we were able to organize. Because this guy came at us with an intent to break us, to drive every ounce of resources that we had But we took the opportunity to organize and reorganize our dues structure. And in less than three months, we put 150,000 new employees on a new system that belonged to AFGE by working with partners that understood where we needed to go, and we are going there.

And I just want to say this, I’m going to leave this with you. If anybody thinks that AFGE is going someplace, they need to think again, because we here to stay, and we’ll be fighting for our members as long as we are here. We’ve been here for 93 years fighting these fights, and we’ll be here long after this administration and others have gone on.