The Young Workers Committee of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO stands in solidarity with the nearly one million federal government workers who are paying the price for Trump’s government shutdown as he demands $5 Billion for a border wall with Mexico.
420,000 federal workers are being forced to work without pay, with another 380,000 currently laid off without pay, and with no guarantee that they will receive back pay when the shutdown ends. Most of these dedicated public servants are union sisters and brothers. Ernie Johnson, a furloughed federal employee, went to Twitter to say “If no backpay, I’ll likely be evicted by Feb 1,” using the trending hashtag #ShutDownStories.
Billionaire Trump has put hundreds of thousands of families in a financial bind to pay rent and bills, but ironically, under US law it would be unlawful for the same government workers to strike and shutdown the government for any reason. This is a sad illustration of the anti-worker laws championed by the likes of Trump and other employers that make the collective action of unionists difficult or unlawful. We support the inherent and fundamental right of federal government workers, and all working people, to go on strike. No worker should be forced to work without pay, or denied the right to strike.
Trump’s demand for a border wall is a major piece of his anti-immigrant and anti-worker agenda, which includes the mass detention of children, raids and deportations, increased border militarization, and stoking of racist fears of immigrants and minorities. Trump’s agenda works to undermine solidarity by pitting workers in the US against eachother and against workers from other countries looking for employment and a better life. The refugee caravans headed toward the US border are made up not of terrorists as Trump claims, but of working families that have been devastated by corporate policies like NAFTA. We stand with workers fleeing violence and poverty created by US foreign and economic policies, and therefore strongly oppose the border wall and border militarization targeted towards these refugees.
We can make the world a better place by spending that $5 Billion not on a wall and border militarization, but on good union jobs and education programs that actually lift up working and oppressed people. This country has more than enough wealth to take in refugees and invest in wages, benefits, and resources for working people.
– We oppose Trump’s attacks on workers, immigrants, and refugees.
– We call for five billion dollars to be allocated to programs that help working people, not to attack refugees looking for a better life.
We call on unions everywhere to pass similar statements in order to strengthen the fight against Trump’s attacks and build a united, fighting worker’s movement.