{"id":39835,"date":"2025-02-26T13:27:45","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T21:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=39835"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:27:46","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T21:27:46","slug":"on-national-day-of-action-federal-union-rank-and-filers-protest-musk-challenge-their-own-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/02\/26\/on-national-day-of-action-federal-union-rank-and-filers-protest-musk-challenge-their-own-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"On National Day of Action: Federal Union Rank-and-Filers Protest Musk & Challenge Their Own Leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by\u00a0Steve Early<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0February 24, 2025 (BeyondChron.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"photo<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VA occupational therapist Mark Smith energizes crowd<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rank-and-File Lead the Way<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Washington, D.C., there\u2019s now a ritual formula for labor gatherings outside a government office to protest the latest depredations of the \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency\u201d (DOGE) created by President Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paid staffers from national union headquarters and the AFL-CIO arrive with neatly printed signs and approved messages. Worried federal workers mill about on their lunch hour, share the latest rumors, and hold the signs. PR consultants buttonhole the press and hand out media advisories. Often the news of day involves another lawsuit being filed against DOGE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Top union officials and their putative friends on Capitol Hill show up to deliver fiery rally rhetoric or leave statements of support in their wake. In some cases, these are Senate Democrats<\/a> who just voted to confirm the Trump cabinet member now working with DOGE to downsize their own agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside the Beltway, the epi-center of astro-turf organizing, everyone is most comfortable training their fire on the evil genius of Elon Musk. Not busy enough running Tesla, Starlink, SpaceX, and X, the world\u2019s richest man is now directing Trump\u2019s multi-faceted assault on federal workers and the services they provide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No United Front?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite representing hundreds of thousands of those embattled workers around the country, none of the AFL-CIO affiliates representing them have come together and developed a multi-union plan for taking the fight against Musk, DOGE, and Trump to the grassroots level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As VA occupational therapist Mark Smith<\/a> explains politely, that\u2019s because federal employee unions are \u201ca bit siloed.\u201d Instead of looking for ways to unite all workers in the federal sector, their top officials and staff like to promote their own organizational brand, cultivate separate connections to politicians and agency managers, and focus on their particular bargaining units, which too often have low membership and weak locals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To save money, some national unions did agree recently to share the mounting cost of DOGE-related litigation. But a month ago, 39-year old Smith and other younger local union leaders in the Federal Unionist Network (FUN)<\/a> decided this limited form of cooperation was not good enough to meet the challenges of the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, with no national union encouragement or resources, they called for a nation-wide \u201cday of action\u201d<\/a> to resist federal funding freezes, the elimination of 200,000 jobs, the disruption of vital programs, and their further privatization by Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u200b          Their email blast was issued in the name of the \u201cnurses, scientists, park rangers, protectors of our country, researchers, and attorneys who serve our communities every day.\u201d As the FUN organizers reassured their often angry but frightened co-workers, \u200b\u201cIf we speak out together, we can make it clear to the public why Trump\u2019s attack on our jobs is designed to make all of our lives worse\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Rank-and-File Initiative<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results of that rank-and-file initiative to \u201csave our services and build workplace solidarity were on display last Wednesday, Feb. 19\u2013 in more than 35 locations across the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Federal workers, along with labor and community allies, responded to FUN\u2019s appeal in Portland and Seattle, Boise and Boulder, Philadelphia and Baltimore, Chattanooga and Boston, Troy, NY and NYC, where 1,000 protestors gathered in Lower Manhattan\u2019s Foley Square to hear speakers like longtime VA defender, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here in San Francisco, outside the (now much protested<\/a>) Tesla dealer at the corner of Van Ness and O\u2019Farrell, a crowd of 300 assembled, including members of National Federation of Federal Employees Local 1, which elected Smith its president two years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were joined by local staffers of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Board, the Park Service, Army Corps of Engineers, National Labor Relations Board, the General Services and Social Security Administrations, and the federal Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As CFPB attorney Hai Binh Nguyen told The Chronicle<\/em><\/a>, she was there to protest a stop work order issued earlier this month, which has stalled investigations of consumer fraud cases. \u201cI think it\u2019s really rare, \u201cshe said, \u201cthat we get to be in a place that has a really amazing mission. And our mission is to make the market fair and protect everyday consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stop The Coup<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Members of the crowd chanted, cheered, and hoisted banners and placards that were home-made and hand-lettered, rather than union issued. One sign-waver called for \u201cNational Parks, Not Oilfields,\u201d while another wanted \u201cNo Muskrats in Our VA Hospital.\u201d Other personal demands included: \u201cStop the Coup,\u201d \u201cProtect Our Clean Air Act,\u201d \u201cFire and\/or Deport Musk!\u201d and \u201cKeep Your DOGE off My CFPB!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The message from a yoga practitioner was simply \u201cDown DOG-e.\u201d Another placard read: \u201cFederal Workers: Here to Serve, Not Afraid and Not Leaving,\u201d which pretty well summed up the sentiment of the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his speech to the group, Smith reminded everyone of who does the real work of the federal government. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen a billionaire carry the mail,\u201d he said \u201cI\u2019ve never seen a billionaire put out a forest fire. I\u2019ve never seen a billionaire make sure people get their Social Security checks on time. I\u2019ve never seen a billionaire answer a phone call from a suicidal veteran on the VA crisis line.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another speaker, Army veteran and VA patient Ricardo Ortiz recalled the role played by working-class vets in the long campaign to create a healthcare system, based on public provision of care, not for-profit medical treatment. That achievement is now at risk, he warned, because of bi-partisan efforts to privatize the VA-run Veterans Health Administration.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belated Backing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the eve of FUN\u2019s after-work events and coordinated workplace solidarity activities, the DC-based headquarters of NFFE, the National Treasury Employees, and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) finally endorsed the \u201cday of action.\u201d The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal worker union, and National Nurses United (NNU), which represents 15,000 VA nurses\u2014never officially embraced this bottom up effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For their part, FUN organizers like Smith in San Francisco and Colin Smalley<\/a>, an Army Corps of Engineers geologist who leads IFPTE Local 777 Chicago, began making contact, via a WhatsApp chat, with other like-minded workers prior to last year\u2019s national Labor Notes<\/a> conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that April, 2024 meeting of 5,000 union activists, they conferred, face-to-face, with federal employees from throughout the U.S. They also compared notes with trade unionists from abroad who, as Smalley recalls, were already dealing with \u201cautocratic and, at times, even fascist regimes, which exploit public employees as scapegoats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Trump\u2019s re-election, locals from multiple federal employee unions, who are doing membership education and mobilization, report rapid growth.  At the VA Medical Center on Clement St., NFFE Local 1  holds weekly \u201clunch and learns\u201d to keep its new dues payers fully informed about their contract rights and how to use them in current and past fights<\/a> with VA headquarters and local management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s definitely not fun to be a federal worker these days. But thanks to this latest example of Labor Notes-backed rank-and-file networking, many DOGE targets are not waiting, any longer, for a fight-back plan, handed down from above. Instead, they\u2019re developing one of the own and, in the process, pressuring the labor officialdom in Washington to get on board (and not just at the last minute).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody right now needs to become an organizer,\u201d says FUN supporter Chris Dols<\/a>, president of IFTPE Local 98 in New York City. \u201cIf you\u2019re a federal employee and you don\u2019t know what your union is, get involved with the FUN, we\u2019ll help you figure it out. If you don\u2019t have a union, we\u2019ll help you learn how to organize one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Steve Early is a former International Union representative for the Communications Workers of America, who helped coordinate multi-union organizing, contract campaigns and strikes in the telecom industry. He is a NewsGuild\/CWA member and can be reached at <\/strong>Lsupport@aol.com<\/strong><\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steve Early<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Steve Early is a longtime labor journalist and author of Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress (Monthly Review Press, 2013), The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor (Haymarket Books, 2011) and Embedded With Organized Labor (MRP, 2009)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Steve Early\u00a0on\u00a0February 24, 2025 (BeyondChron.org) VA occupational therapist Mark Smith energizes crowd Rank-and-File Lead the Way In Washington, D.C., there\u2019s now a ritual formula for labor gatherings outside a government office to protest the latest depredations of the \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency\u201d (DOGE) created by President Trump. Paid staffers from… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39835"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39836,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39835\/revisions\/39836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}