Federal Workers Are Organizing to Fight the Trump/Musk Oligarchy
On Saturday, April 5, millions hit the streets in 1,200 cities and towns across the country demanding “Hands Off” our federal programs, rights and workers. Unlike mass actions of the first Trump resistance, this one was backed by many unions and by the Federal Unionists Network, or the FUN. The FUN, a self-organized network of rank-and-file federal workers, is a significant focal point in the struggle against the billionaire takeover of the federal government.
The FUN’s strategic role in the fight against the oligarchy
Federal workers are a highly strategic group in this struggle. They are a massive workforce, of some 2.3 million civilian employees, with large concentrations in every city in the U.S. – think federal office buildings, postal facilities, social security offices, VA hospitals and research facilities, among many other federal worksites. Nearly 150,000 federal workers live in California, with tens of thousands in the larger cities where DSA chapters are strong.
Beyond their size and broad geographic distribution, federal workers have drawn a compelling connection between their immediate interest in saving their jobs and their union contracts and the interests of working people in saving public services and protections we all depend on. They did so very effectively in a March 13 livestream, which got 200,000 views.
In other words, as noted in a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, “By going after the federal work force, Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk are radicalizing the very people who can best explain how the government does so much good for so many.”
The Federal Unionists Network has been organizing since 2023, but since Inauguration Day its ranks and leadership have swelled to a level that has allowed it to set the resistance agenda for its union hierarchy. While the dozen or so unions representing federal workers litigate and lobby, top union leaders recognize that the real organizing to build the mass power it will take to win is happening at the rank-and-file level. As AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said on a webinar the FUN held on March 30 to train its members to organize their co-workers, “Yes, we’re filing the lawsuits, yes, we’re fighting back in Congress, but most importantly,” she said, referring to the FUN, “we’re mobilizing in the streets.”
“All this,” as the Times op-ed concluded, makes federal workers “uniquely well positioned to lead a new kind of resistance — more mainstream and grounded than the last one, and powerful enough to mobilize millions of Americans under its banner.”
DSA, May Day and Beyond
DSA’s National Political Committee has adopted a May Day resolution that proposes that chapters ally with the FUN; and a number of DSA and YDSA chapters in California are already involved in planning May Day rallies and marches. We are well-situated to bring along our labor and community allies and connect their struggles with that of the federal workers. Getting our local unions and labor councils mobilized shouldn’t be too heavy a lift. After all, they recognize that the threat to federal workers and their union contracts is just the beginning of a wider war against workers and unions in every sector. As one labor scholar put it, “the Trump order [to cancel collective bargaining agreements] threatens to produce a veritable nuclear winter in U.S. labor relations” well beyond the federal sector.
Looking beyond May Day, East Bay DSA’s Labor Committee adopted a resolution creating a working group to plan a longer-term campaign to fight the Trump/Musk oligarchy in solidarity with federal workers and the FUN. Our aim is to bring a priority campaign resolution to our chapter convention in May. The first meeting of the campaign planning group drew over fifteen comrades, who brainstormed goals for the campaign.
One of the proposed goals was getting the word about the FUN out to federal workers in the East Bay, for instance, by heading to the federal office building in Oakland at lunchtime to talk with them. (One of our members works at a federal research facility and is already spreading the word there.)
Another goal we discussed is linking the struggles of local unions and community groups to the larger fight against the oligarchy that the FUN is quarterbacking. The federal unionists are in every agency, connected with funding and policy implementation on every imaginable issue – from education to housing to transit, from environmental protections to national parks to veterans’ healthcare, from Social Security to Medicaid to public health, and so much more. That means there is virtually no issue DSA is involved in that cannot be connected back to the oligarchy’s threats. In particular, cuts at the Department of Education, if not its complete elimination, are hitting our K-12 public schools, and our colleges and public universities are threatened with cuts both there and in other agencies (along with an attack on basic rights of free speech and association). Similarly, cuts to Medicaid would decimate our public health system. Connecting our local teachers’ unions, academic workers and university staff, and healthcare workers to the national struggle of the FUN, and vice versa, will not be hard.
Engagement by socialists is critical to building the movement
Socialists played critical roles from the earliest days of the Civil Rights Movement, and we may be in an analogous early stage of a new mass movement today. We are also discussing the importance of our chapter joining local organizing committees that will plan future mass actions, like the ones on May Day. Our role is crucial, not only because we can reach so many workers who did not learn about the April 5 rallies, but also because our experience of direct member democracy in DSA suits us well to building a democratic culture that ensures that working class people are driving the campaign. In the longer term, building broad, democratic local alliances across the country will be critical to a potential 2028 general strike, and to the eventual creation of a workers’ party in the U.S.
There is a real possibility that the actions the FUN is organizing with its partners, like the mass “Hands Off” actions across the U.S. on April 5, and the more left-leaning actions planned for May Day, signal the birth of a true, sustainable mass movement such as the U.S. has not seen since the Civil Rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Socialists can’t bring such movements into being by an act of will; but when the conditions are right for them to emerge, our strategic organizing and tactical intervention can play an outsized role in their success. Allying with the Federal Unionists Network to connect their struggle within the federal apparatus with regional and local struggles in our states, cities and towns should be a priority in all our chapters. We are hopeful that East Bay DSA’s membership will agree when we bring our priority campaign resolution for a vote on May 14.