AFL-CIO joins mass rally at Department of Labor to protest Musk coup (original) (raw)
Dylan Manshack/PW
WASHINGTON—The nation’s veterans “are the most deeply affected” by the Elon Musk-Donald Trump planned cuts, including at the U.S. Labor Department, says William Attig. As an Iraq-Afghanistan war vet who’s Executive Director of the AFL-CIO’s affinity group for those who served, he should know.
The Labor Department has an office that helps veterans and their families find jobs and also walks them through the paperwork they need to establish small businesses, Attig explained in an interview before a February 5 rally on the DOL’s front stairs.
That office is on the hit list of Musk and Trump, along with the rest of DOL, he fears.
The Labor Department is important for workers, union and non-union. Its workers, almost all union members, monitor corporate criminals for overtime pay, minimum wage, and job safety and health violations. They also write new rules the corporate class hates to follow. And OSHA not only protects job safety and health but has the added task of shielding whistleblowers against lawbreakers.
All that is in danger, the AFL-CIO, the Government Employees, the Service Employees, the Communications Workers, AFSCME and the Economic Policy Institute said in a lawsuit filed in federal court in D.C., concurrent with the rally.
They demand a permanent court order banning Musk, Trump and Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) from grabbing private and sensitive Labor Department data, including union records and Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigations of Musk’s companies, such as Tesla and twitter/X. DOL workers have been told to turn the data over to DOGE’s rooters—or get fired on the spot.
There were rallies against the Musk takeovers in each of the 50 states yesterday. Meanwhile, at the rally at the DOL many groups of workers were demanding eviction of Musk from the federal government.
Plumbers Local 130 member Tina Barilla of Chicago told the crowd Labor Department programs encouraging women in construction trades helped land her an apprenticeship. Now she makes good money as a skilled tradeswoman. Musk could have that program as a candidate for the axe.
“This [apprenticeship] is a pipeline that allows people the opportunity to learn a skilled trade. We need that skill…that no one can ever take away,” Barilla said.
But Trump gave multibillionaire Musk such free rein to cut agencies, programs and people that some of the milder signs at rallies against Musk’s scorched-earth plans call him a “co-president.”
At this rally several signs termed Musk a Nazi, or worse. The rallies are moving agency to agency, daily, ever since Musk lowered the boom and shut one, USAID, locking out and evicting workers.
One sign suggested “Deport Musk—to Mars.” Trump wants to populate the Red Planet.
Musk planned to show up at DOL on February 5, intending to shut it down. The hundreds of people gathered on the Labor Department’s steps out front, marshalled by the AFL-CIO, the Government Employees (AFGE)—which represents DOL’s workers—and other unions, were ready for him.
Then AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, keynote speaker and rally emcee, announced Musk would be a no-show, holding “a virtual meeting” instead. “Chickenshit!” the crowd roared. “Coward!”
“We are standing together and standing strong because we are sick and tired of the fear being instilled by our government,” Shuler said of Musk and his puppet, Trump.
“This is about our health. This is about our safety. This is about our jobs,” she declared. “Mine workers, construction workers, laborers, nurses—all are protected by DOL. And because of the people in this building, we can stand up” as whistleblowers against corporate exploiters.
“I don’t care whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican or an independent. No one voted to undermine our rights,” she added. “This is not Tesla. This is not Twitter” where worker-hater Musk arbitrarily fired four-fifths of the workforce.
Musk’s non-appearance left lawmakers to speak and individual workers and their reps, Attig included, to talk about what the Musk-Trump cuts would mean to them.
Legislators pledged their support for workers. Typical was Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who declared, “Elon Musk and his lackeys are fighting for the billii0naires and we” in Congress “are fighting for us.”
The crowd was somewhat skeptical. Every lawmaker Shuler ushered to the microphone was greeted with cries of “Do something!” Only Rep. Stephen Horsford, D-Nev., a former top official with Unite Here Culinary Workers Local 226, responded. Gesturing to the federal courthouse of D.C., right across the street, he said, “We’re taking him [Musk] to court, and we’re going to win.”
Musk and his 22-year-old workers at the Trump-named “Department of Government Efficiency” swoop down on agencies, rifle through their records, and—at USAID—shut them down. The prior day, at the Treasury, they grabbed millions of private, personal records of anyone who deals with the government.
At DOL, the lawsuit says, “workers have been ordered to give DOGE access to anything they want-or risk termination.” Department leaders told workers that “when Mr. Musk and his team visit, they are to do whatever they ask, not to push back, not to ask questions. They were told to provide access to any DOL system they requested access to and not to worry about any security protocols; just do it.
Could face termination
“Based on leadership’s statements, the employee believed they could face termination if they did not comply,” the suit adds.
In the vets’ case, Attig explained in the interview, the DOGE workers “are just going to see the numbers” of veterans and families whom the Labor Department’s veterans office aids. “They’re not going to see the stories, especially of the severely disabled vets,” he adds.
Many of those stories are in the federal government itself. “The federal workforce is the largest employer of veterans in the country,” he said. At least one union president, AFGE’s Everett Kelley, is a veteran. His union, the Postal Workers, the Letter Carriers and AFSCME also all have high proportions of veterans in their memberships. So do building trades unions.
Meanwhile, Musk forced agencies to lay off workers, and at least 40,000 others have accepted the Trump regime’s vague offer of “buyouts,” paying them through September 30 not to work. Deadline for the buyouts is February 6.
News reports say Musk and Trump plan massive layoffs if workers don’t voluntarily quit. The government employs two million workers, and four million who toil for subcontractors.
A young emergency medical tech who worked at “a large national park in Arizona,” is one of those who’s been laid off, by the Interior Department. “I put the last ten years of my life into this job,” he said. “Now I’ll start looking” for similar jobs in state systems. “But I’ll be competing with every other ranger who’s been laid off.
“But I’m more worried about the people who are going to die” as a result of the cuts, he explained. “EMTs, law enforcement—all gone. So there will be no one to get to” visitors in distress.
Tom Clark, of Electrical Workers Local 26, says his members were—emphasis on “were”—looking forward to more work on new federal construction, specifically a new FBI headquarters and a new building for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the printing/ minting plant that churns out money,
Congress approved $1 billion over several years to replace the Bureau’s century-plus old building near the Washington Monument with a modern factory in the working-class D.C. suburb of Beltsville, Md. The foundation hole’s been dug. But now the project has come to a halt, Clark says.
His members “thought it was too late to stop,” Clark adds. It wasn’t. Musk shut down federal projects from coast to coast. Unions are suing Musk and Trump in court, to resume.
“We have workers at Boeing for whom OSHA is our backbone, for worker safety and for whistleblower safety,” Gay Henson, Secretary-Treasurer of the Professional and Technical Engineers, told the crowd at DOL. That’s important not just to workers, but to anyone who boards an airplane.
Boeing, the nation’s leading aircraft manufacturer, is suffering through a long stretch of revelations about problems with its planes, mostly due to non-union subcontractors. OSHA workers, who are AFGE members, protect the whistleblowers who bring those problems to light.
But how does OSHA know what to concentrate on? It relies on a federal advisory committee, representing the airlines, the workers and aircraft-oriented companies, Boeing included. “The committee was shuttered on Monday” by Musk. “They don’t want to hear from it,” Henson said.
Personally, “I work in a nuclear power plant, and I need workplace protection” OSHA provides, given the hazardous materials she handles and radiation exposure she would suffer without its safeguards. “When you attack [OSHA] workers like that, you are attacking the people of this country.”
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