Unions are handing Democrats a golden opportunity amid the shutdown battle | Judith Levine
The Federal Unionists Network (FUN) and 35 national, state and local unions have written a letter to the Democratic congressional leadership – Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Hakeem Jeffries in the House, urging them to hold out against Republicans in the budget negotiations, even if it means a government shutdown and halted paychecks. The signatories represent “tens of thousands of federal workers”, according to an FUN press release.The Democrats’ demands, the letter says, should include “adequate funding for critical public services” and a “guarantee” that funds appropriated by the Congress are spent.This gives the Democrats the chance not just to win this budget battle, but to begin to win back their identity and the people who should be their base.“A government shutdown is never Plan A,” the letter reads. “Federal workers and the communities we serve will face severe hardship. But federal workers will willingly forego paychecks in the hopes of preserving the programs we have devoted our lives to administering.”These workers are showing remarkable solidarity with each other. They are willing to stage the closest thing to a general strike the US has seen since 1946, when more than 100,000 Oakland, California, workers stayed home, shutting the city down.Federal workers cannot legally go on strike. But in the last few months, even the option of a wildcat walkout presented a quandary. It would have granted, if they struck, the Trump administration exactly what it wanted: a decimated civil service. They also would have given their nemeses a psychological victory unpalatable to themselves. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains,” Russell Vought, now US office of management and budget (OMB) director, told a conservative audience last October. “We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma.”But now, they’re ready to wake up in the morning and not go to work – if they haven’t already been fired. They are not the villains but the heroes. And they’re handing the trauma back to those who have been almost gleefully traumatizing them.Moreover, labor is standing together not just for its members’ bread and butter. In fact, as miners and railroad workers, teachers and auto workers have done for decades, the members are foregoing their own bread and butter for a greater good, for future workers – and in this case, for a progressive American future. They are speaking for what they should have been speaking for all along: economic justice, democracy and the wellbeing of the people.They’re speaking for what the Democratic party should be speaking for.“Federal unions and workers stand with members of Congress who oppose damaging cuts, unconstitutional executive overreach, attacks on science and data itself, and attempts to undercut organized labor,” the letter says. “We join together with you in the fight to save and strengthen the many important government programs and services that have been created throughout our country’s history to raise standards of living, provide safety, and ensure the continued growth of science, industry, and American prosperity.”Organized labor is giving the party that abandoned it another chance to show which side it is on. They’re standing with Democratic allies in Congress. Those Congress members must stand with them.As usual, the party’s leadership is focusing on one thing. This time it’s cuts to Obamacare subsidies. That’s a good start.But in this letter, the unions have told most of the narrative. The Democrats need only to furnish the moral of the story: why are the Republicans cutting everything under the sun, endangering the country’s safety, security, and prosperity? To further enrich their rich friends and corporate benefactors.Now’s your chance, Democrats. Don’t blow it.
Judith Levine is a Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism More
