How Did Trump’s First Week Help Working People?

"Your bosses just got very, very happy."

What has Trump’s “shock and awe” week of executive orders done for ordinary working people?

It started with union-busting. The President signed an order ending not transportable remote work, something that should be negotiated, but as Government Executive reports, “House Republicans and conservative think tank operatives last week floated the idea of changing federal sector labor law to allow presidents to reopen collective bargaining agreements upon their inauguration.”

Trump made his intentions clear when he called federal workers “the cancer,” saying they should all be fired, and gleefully signing, as the same story noted, an:

[O]rder aimed at reinstating Schedule F, a proposal from the end of his first term that would convert tens of thousands of career federal workers in “policy-related” jobs out of the merit-based competitive service and into at-will positions, effectively stripping them of their civil service protections . . .

Additionally, Trump is expected to sign orders to reduce federal employee unions’ role at agencies and federal workers’ collective bargaining rights. Though it is not yet clear what form those will take, Trump during his first term signed a trio of orders that made it easier to fire federal workers, reduced the scope of collective bargaining at agencies and severely restricting union officials’ access to official time.

In the rhetoric of Trump world, these folks are dehumanized members of the “deep state” who need to be punished and purged so the beast of government can be slain. In reality, though, they are simply government workers with the same concerns as the rest of us who have served their country, many of them for years, and now they’ve been thrust into a hostile workplace with the boss from hell. As Politico reports, federal workers are living in fear of where they will end up, with one person telling them, “I would love to leave, but I don't know where I'd go, and I am terrified of not being able to pay rent and not having healthcare.”

Clearly, this is just the first act in what will be an all-out attack on public sector workers of all stripes. The same conservative think tanks that hate unionized federal workers are also not fans of public sector unions period and would love to simply roll back the New Deal, paving the way for “at will” employment everywhere. Although this is not polling well with the American public, it has already trickled down to the state level with Utah Republicans now taking aim at collective bargaining for teachers and other public sector workers in that state.

Of course, this will ultimately hurt unionized private sector employees too once Republicans are done with workers employed by federal, state, and municipal governments. And if you think this will somehow raise the bar for nonunion workers across the country, I have a pair of overpriced Trump sneakers and a Trump Bible to sell you.

Your bosses just got very, very happy.

How is Trump treating the most vulnerable workers? Last Tuesday The Jumping-Off Place published Alliance San Diego’s analysis of the administration’s flurry of executive orders on immigration explicitly designed to go after the very population of largely undocumented immigrants who work in our kitchens, fields, hotels, and elsewhere in the American economy, performing labor we are happy to be the recipient of even as many Americans, particularly in MAGA world, eagerly dehumanize and criminalize them.

But what’s that got to do with the price of eggs?

How about those struggling to keep health insurance? They are also under assault. As the Guardian explained last week, millions of Americans on the margins are now at risk of losing their healthcare:

Those people whose coverage is now deemed at risk are the roughly 24 million Americans who have purchased their health insurance via the Affordable Care Act this year. The ACA, also known as Obamacare, helped to expand Medicaid benefits and provides affordable health insurance to millions of people.

Trump’s actions this week will affect all aspects of the ACA, including eligibility requirements, federal subsidies and enrollment deadlines, which determine when Americans can apply for insurance, without repealing the act, which would take action from the US Congress. But the actions are expected to create more barriers and result in healthcare coverage becoming even less accessible.

In a one-page document published by Politico, Trump outlines options for spending cuts. These plans include measures that would reduce the amount of money states have to fund Medicaid and limiting health program eligibility depending on citizenship status. Every option listed involves cutting funding for and access to healthcare coverage.

In addition to this, Trump rescinded a Biden executive order lowering prescription drug prices for Americans and is looking to cut funding and impose work mandates for Medicaid recipients. Private insurers and drug companies were grinning from ear to ear.

And the fun just keeps coming as Trump went into overdrive, unleashing a wave of twelve more executive orders ending the United States’ commitment to the UN Paris Climate Agreement, halting green energy initiatives, and rolling back protections for clean air and water while opening up pristine wilderness to oil exploration, and gutting efforts promoting climate justice. All this will make it less likely we will be able slow or even adapt to the climate catastrophe. Big Oil was jumping for joy.

And let’s not even get started with racial, gender, and sexual justice or the rule of law.

And what about the price of groceries? Affordable housing? The overall cost of living for working people? Not a single dictate in this ongoing blitzkrieg did anything to address the needs of ordinary Americans, Trump voters or not. When will that happen? It won’t.

But the billionaires, Wall Street types, and corporate executives are extremely pleased. That, of course, is what matters most in our born-again Gilded Age where the same billionaires who funded Trump’s campaign now get to determine the agenda more nakedly than ever before.

As Portside Labor reports:

A handful of megadonors helped Trump narrow the fundraising gap with Harris, and one of them essentially helped run his campaign. The most striking consequence of Citizens United continues to be the expanded influence of the very wealthiest donors. Last year, donors who gave at least $5 million to super PACs in the presidential race spent more than twice as much as they did in 2020. Roughly 44% ($481 million) of all the money raised to support Trump came from just 10 individual donors. The top 10 donors supporting Harris accounted for nearly 8% ($126 million) of her campaign. For both candidates, most of this money came from outside groups like super PACs.

Thus, it should come as no surprise whatsoever that ordinary working people are not helping design the menu of policy options for Trump to choose from. Instead, they are very much ON the menu. His angry populist rhetoric aside, the President is not at all interested in eating the rich as he prefers to feast with them while the rabble loyally cheer for him, assuring themselves that it’s the other guy who deserves to be dinner.