Trump is actively destroying your labor rights. Happy Labor Day!

Here’s how he’s repaying the workers who supported him.

While running for president in 2024, Trump claimed that he is “much better for the unions” than his opponent, and has said that union members “love Trump.” He appeared in front of crowds of auto workers and promised, “I will take you to new heights never dreamed of before.” In the end, he ended up getting 41 percent of the union vote, a surprisingly strong showing for a party and a candidate that treats unions as a rhetorical punching bag.

Once in office, how did Trump repay his new labor allies? By betraying them. His administration has moved to dismantle union protections for federal employees, gutted the government’s labor watchdogs, and even brutalized union leaders who protest against the administration. All of this has led Pennsylvania union leader Jimmy Williams to call this “the most anti-union administration” he’s seen.

Labor Day commemorates the contributions of workers across America. It’s also likely to be one of those federal holidays that Trump spends attacking his “haters and losers” on social media, a favorite pastime of his. To mark the occasion, below we’ve compiled a list of just some of the recent actions that this administration has taken to hurt American workers and undermine labor:

1.) Busting unions at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Last month, Doug Collins, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, told the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) that it was no longer recognized as the “exclusive representative of any other VA bargaining unit employee.” This move affects thousands of members, including doctors, lawyers, dentists, benefits administrators, mental health specialists, nurses, and many more across the VA system.

Collins’ statement is inconsistent with guidelines from the Office of Personnel Management, which instructs that agencies are “not to terminate any [collective bargaining agreements] until the conclusion of litigation.” National Nurses United, whose contracts were a part of those terminated by Collins, called this a retaliation against unions that are actively speaking out against Trump’s illegal and anti-worker policies.

Eliminating unions makes it harder for employees to get better pay, strips workers of the right to a neutral party during work disputes, and threatens their benefits. These moves also have a broader impact on the roughly 400,000 employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs, with the potential to send many of them fleeing the agency, depriving our veterans of the care they deserve.

2.) Gutting the agency that ensures safe working conditions.

In 1970, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) was created alongside the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). NIOSH’s mission was simple: help reduce work-related illness and injury. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the creation of these agencies “has saved the lives of more than 712,000 workers and reduced jobsite deaths by almost two-thirds, even as the size of the US workforce has more than doubled.”

In April, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. notified the 1,400-person workforce of NIOSH that the agency would lose 64 percent of its personnel. After public outcry in response to the cuts, the administration hired back some 300 employees. Despite these reinstatements, crucial facilities like the Spokane Research Laboratory have been left abandoned and forced to shutter their life-saving work.

Trump and his lackeys have destroyed federal agencies like the NIOSH under the guise of saving money. In reality, workplace-related injuries and illnesses cost businesses between $174 billion and $348 billion each year. If Trump and RFK Jr. wanted to save money and help workers, they would invest in these agencies, not dismantle them.

3.) Crippling the nation’s labor watchdog.

Gwynne Wilcox, the chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), was illegally fired by Trump in March. The NLRB is an independent federal agency that helps guarantee the right of private employees to organize into unions and bargain collectively, operating as the sole decider of labor rights for more than 100 million American workers across the country. Thanks to Wilcox’s firing, the agency’s board is no longer able to meet quorum, making it impossible to meet and decide policy.

To further rub salt in the wound, after illegally firing Wilcox, Trump then appointed Marvin E. Kaplan as the board’s chairman. Kaplan’s prior nomination to the board in 2017 was actively opposed by various labor organizations. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights stated that Kaplan’s “only experience is with drafting legislation seeking to weaken worker protections.” In 2020, the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest federation of unions, opposed his nomination on grounds that “Kaplan’s record of decisions at the board has been among the most partisan, anti-worker in the board’s history.”

4.) Cozying up to CEOs hostile to labor.

In recent years, some of the nation’s leading brands have joined in legal efforts to have the NLRB deemed unconstitutional (more on that below). Elon Musk’s SpaceX, spearheading these efforts, has been followed by giants like Amazon and Apple. All of these companies have one other thing in common: they were all investigated for or found guilty of labor law violations.

Musk was chosen to lead the Department of Government Efficiency and became one of Trump’s most trusted advisors after he donated $270 million to Trump’s campaign. Under Musk’s leadership, Tesla was found guilty by the NLRB in March 2021 of violating federal labor laws. Workers were fired for union organizing, and Elon himself tweeted a threat to remove benefits from all unionized workers.

Jeff Bezos likewise bent the knee to Trump, pledged a $1 million donation to his inaugural fund in December 2024, and was granted a “VIP” seat at the inauguration. A U.S. appeals court recently blocked Amazon’s attempt to get an NLRB investigation paused while it fights to prove the board is unconstitutional.

Apple’s Tim Cook also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and even gave him a gold-plated tchotchke in the Oval Office. In November of last year, Apple was accused by the NLRB of trying to prevent its employees from discussing pay equity, along with forcing out an engineer who circulated a wage survey. At the time, this was the third complaint in one month issued by the NLRB specifically against Apple.

5.) Having union leaders beaten up.

David Huerta, president of the Service Employees International Union of California, was knocked down, hospitalized, and arrested by federal law enforcement officials in June while protesting immigration raids on work sites in his state. This was part of Trump’s broader strategy of using these raids to trigger a backlash, and then cracking down on protestors.

Union members and leaders across the country spoke out in opposition to Huerta’s treatment. After being released from the hospital, he said in a statement: “Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals … This is injustice. And we all have to stand on the right side of justice.”

Huerta rose to lead the SEIU of California—the state’s largest union, with 750,000 members—after helping organize janitors and other low-wage service workers in the state, many of whom are immigrants. He’s the most literal casualty of Trump’s hostility to workers and immigrants, and this administration’s willingness to deploy force to stifle dissent.

6.) Trying to eliminate the referee altogether.

But the threat to organized labor doesn’t stop at intimidation and violence. Trump and his allies are now trying to erase the very rules that make unions possible in the first place. On August 19, three federal judges, including two Trump appointees, declared that the structure of the NLRB is probably unconstitutional. The judges said the president should be able to fire labor board members whenever he wants, for any reason.

This is more than a legal technicality with some hypothetical future impact. The judges have already frozen the NLRB's ability to go after companies that break labor laws in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Companies like SpaceX can now ignore labor violations while the courts sort this out.

What makes this even worse? Normally, the Justice Department would defend a federal agency in court. But Trump's DOJ has already said it will not defend the NLRB. That means the administration is actively helping the corporations trying to destroy the agency, instead of protecting the workers it promised to represent.

The case is now likely headed to the Supreme Court, where Trump's hand-picked majority could strip away the NLRB's independence entirely. If that happens, Trump will almost certainly fire and replace every labor board member with people who side with corporations over workers. The agency would still exist on paper, but it would become a tool for bosses instead of a shield for workers.

The scale of what’s at stake is staggering. Roughly 16 million workers in the United States are represented by some sort of labor union—more than 10 percent of the country’s workforce. Trump campaigned as a friend to workers, but he's governing as their enemy. Despite his bravado about winning over union members in record numbers, if Trump's first year in office is any indication, he's on track to be the most anti-labor president in recent history.

American history has had no shortage of robber barons, and the oligarchs Trump is choosing to surround himself with are no different. He’s counting on the country not to notice, or not to care, that he’s dismantling labor rights while lining his pockets with money from billionaires. And he’s counting on the workers whom his policies are immiserating not to speak out, to be too intimidated or beaten down to tell the plain truth about this administration’s actions.

This Labor Day, he’s counting on you to just shut up and go away. Will you?

Home of the Brave is a new initiative highlighting the harms of Donald Trump’s second term.