No institutions have put more people into the middle class than unions. They were largely responsible for turning a job in manufacturing into an entry into the middle class for millions of blue collar workers after WWII.
In the U.S., unionism has shrunk disastrously in recent decades and the middle class along with it. Inequality has grown to possibly the highest in the nation’s history and higher than any other developed country. Inequality leads to an unhealthy society and no other society among the advanced nations is unhealthier right now than the U.S., it’s very democracy at stake.
Only 10 percent of American workers are now unionized, a 40-year low: the public sector 33 percent, the private sector a mere six percent. Unionization in the public sector is greater but unfortunately handicapped—in the federal government and the vast majority of states, public sector strike action is prohibited and the prohibitions enforced with serious penalties.
The rights of federal government employees are set by Congress and they are not generous. Unions are prohibited from striking, which significantly reduces their leverage in negotiations. Nor can they bargain on pay, benefits, or hiring/firing, all of which are set by Congress. It is illegal even to belong to a union that “asserts the right to strike against the government of the United States.” In 1981 the Air Traffic Controllers staged a strike and President Reagan fired all 11,000 of them. About the only muscle the unions can bring is through lobbying and filing lawsuits.
What limited power they have is being further reduced by President Trump. To begin with, he has cut the federal work force by over 300,000 employees. To deal with those remaining, he has issued an executive order stripping over 80 percent of unionized federal workers of their already limited collective-bargaining rights. He also eliminated automatic payroll deductions of dues. The government is now proposing a new class of employee that would reassign a broad category of career civil servants and strip them of the job protections they have under U.S. law.
Joseph McCartin, a Georgetown University labour historian, called Trump’s executive order “the biggest act of union-busting in U.S. history.”
In a rare moment of Congress doing something useful, it has actually defended the workers. The House of Representatives passed the Protect America’s Workforce Act in December. The bill, which even included the support of 20 Republicans, would restore the collective-bargaining rights. However, it has yet to pass the Senate and President Trump’s potential veto. A bipartisan group from the House and Senate have formed a Federal Workforce Caucus to support federal workers while protecting the integrity and livelihoods of America’s workers.
The federal government labour movement itself, moribund for decades for obvious reasons, is also showing some signs of life. According to one young organizer, “The federal labor movement has been a sleeping giant for a long time. Trump woke it up.” In 2025, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) was the fastest growing union in the country. It is leading a coalition of unions and other parties in filing a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s latest effort to undermine job protections. Another point of encouragement is that unions have rarely been more popular in the U.S. with nearly 70 percent approval of the public.
The union movement is yet another democratic institution threatened by Trump and his MAGA horde. A vigorous union movement at the heart of the federal government, still the nation’s largest employer, could be an important counter to the slide into authoritarianism. Strong, independent unions have long been a pillar of democratic political culture.
In Joe Biden, working class Americans had the most pro-worker, pro-union president in decades. They betrayed him by replacing him with Trump, and now their replacement has betrayed them—the poetic irony of people getting the government they deserve.