Federal Union Rank-and-Filers Protest Musk & Challenge Their Own Leaders

In Washington, D.C., there’s now a ritual formula for labor gatherings outside a government office to protest the latest depredations of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) created by President Trump.

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. 

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 who just voted to confirm the Trump cabinet member now working with DOGE to downsize their own agency.

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, and having his 14th child with an employee at Neuralink, the world’s richest man is now directing Trump’s multi-faceted assault on federal workers and the services they provide. 

No United Front?

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.

“… with no national union encouragement or resources, they called for a nation-wide “day of action” to resist federal funding freezes, the elimination of 200,000 jobs, the disruption of vital programs”

As VA occupational therapist Mark Smith explains politely, that’s because federal employee unions are “a bit siloed.” 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.

 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) decided this limited form of cooperation was not good enough to meet the challenges of the moment. 

So, with no national union encouragement or resources, they called for a nation-wide “day of action” to resist federal funding freezes, the elimination of 200,000 jobs, the disruption of vital programs, and their further privatization by Trump.

​Their email blast was issued in the name of the “nurses, scientists, park rangers, protectors of our country, researchers, and attorneys who serve our communities every day.” As the FUN organizers reassured their often angry but frightened co-workers, ​“If we speak out together, we can make it clear to the public why Trump’s attack on our jobs is designed to make all of our lives worse…”

A Rank-and-File Initiative

The results of that rank-and-file initiative to “save our services and build workplace solidarity were on display last Wednesday, Feb. 19– in more than 35 locations across the nation. 

Federal workers, along with labor and community allies, responded to FUN’s 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’s Foley Square to hear speakers like longtime VA defender, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

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

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.

As CFPB attorney Hai Binh Nguyen told The Chronicle, she was there to protest a stop work order issued earlier this month, which has stalled investigations of consumer fraud cases. “I think it’s really rare, “she said, “that 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.”

Stop The Coup

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 “National Parks, Not Oilfields,” while another wanted “No Muskrats in Our VA Hospital.” Other personal demands included: “Stop the Coup,” “Protect Our Clean Air Act,” “Fire and/or Deport Musk!” and “Keep Your DOGE off My CFPB!”

The message from a yoga practitioner was simply “Down DOG-e.” Another placard read: “Federal Workers: Here to Serve, Not Afraid and Not Leaving,” which pretty well summed up the sentiment of the crowd.

In his speech to the group, Smith reminded everyone of who does the real work of the federal government. “I’ve never seen a billionaire carry the mail,” he said “I’ve never seen a billionaire put out a forest fire. I’ve never seen a billionaire make sure people get their Social Security checks on time. I’ve never seen a billionaire answer a phone call from a suicidal veteran on the VA crisis line.”

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.

Belated Backing

On the eve of FUN’s 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 “day of action.” The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal worker union, and National Nurses United (NNU), which represents 15,000 VA nurses—never officially embraced this bottom up effort.

For their part, FUN organizers like Smith in San Francisco and Colin Smalley, 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’s national Labor Notes conference.

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 “autocratic and, at times, even fascist regimes, which exploit public employees as scapegoats.”

Since Trump’s 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 “lunch and learns” to keep its new dues payers fully informed about their contract rights and how to use them in current and past fights with VA headquarters and local management.

It’s 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’re 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).

“Everybody right now needs to become an organizer,” says FUN supporter Chris Dols, president of IFTPE Local 98 in New York City. “If you’re a federal employee and you don’t know what your union is, get involved with the FUN, we’ll help you figure it out. If you don’t have a union, we’ll help you learn how to organize one.”

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