Saturday, November 09, 2024

New Trump admin to deliver 'body blow' to unions after courting union workers: report

Brad Reed
RAW STORY
November 8, 2024 

President-elect Donald Trump courted union voters during his successful 2024 presidential bid, and now Bloomberg reports that his incoming administration is poised to deliver a "body blow" to organized labor that has enjoyed a significant renaissance under President Joe Biden's administration.

While Biden's administration has helped multiple unions score big new contracts and organizing victories, as well as eliminating noncompete clauses that hold workers back, Trump's last National Labor Relations Board was far more hostile to organized labor and his next one could be even more so.

"The last time Trump ran the government, however, he filled key enforcement roles with management-side attorneys who pushed for companies to have more control over workers’ tips, more time to run anti-union campaigns and more discretion over who gets paid overtime," writes Bloomberg, before adding, "Now that he’s had some practice, he’s likely to do more, faster."

What's more, Bloomberg notes that the GOP blueprint Project 2025 "calls for the loosening of laws governing safety, nondiscrimination and child labor, and floats eliminating public-sector unions" all together.

Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California at Santa Barbara, tells Bloomberg that he expects a second Trump administration will deliver "a warrant for employers to do whatever they want."

But Jennifer Abruzzo, the general counsel for Biden's NLRB, warns that Trump could be playing with fire if he undercuts the work she and her colleagues have done in making life easier for unions.

"I think workers are going to take matters into their own hands," she said.



Expect 'mini-crusades' as government crumbles under Trump: analyst

Matthew Chapman
November 8, 2024 
  RAW STORY


Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump makes a campaign speech at the Johnny Mercer Theatre Civic Center in Savannah, Georgia, U.S. September 24, 2024. REUTERS/Megan Varner/File Photo


Former President Donald Trump and his allies have no plans to fix anything in government, and instead, they'll make a big show out of purging enemies from the civil service while shirking any responsibility for the ill consequences.

That's according to Marc Fisher who wrote in The Washington Post,"The rapscallions of the right are salivating over the scrumptious smorgasbord of opportunities for mischief that the District of Columbia represents."

"The pirates aboard the 'Trump Revenge Tour' need not pack an overnight bag because Washington has it all: a plump platoon of public servants ready to be sacked; a sad downtown emptied out by federal workers still enjoying covid-era downtime at home; a tax-happy city government struggling to improve troubled schools, provide safe streets and build decent housing," he wrote.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's plan to reshape the government for the GOP, calls for mass purges of the civil service and transformation of the federal workforce into a partisan army. Trump will do all this in spades, wrote Fisher — but don't expect him to care about what any of it does to the government or to people's daily lives.

"Sure, there’ll be some ritual firings, and every GOP administration loves to smack D.C. around," wrote Fisher — indeed, even Democratic presidents sometimes overturn D.C.'s decisions. "But does anyone think Trump will be eager to take on the challenge of addressing the 20 percent math proficiency rate among D.C. middle-schoolers? Will the middle managers of the Project 2025 Brigade really want to run D.C.’s sprawling bureaucracies and take the heat when the sewers back up, shoplifting worsens and school attendance remains shockingly low?"

None of that will be on the agenda, he continued, because Trump wants "credit, not responsibility."

"He will, as ever, look for showy ways to spotlight any lefty lunacies his foot soldiers find in the bloated federal workforce or in the region’s many woke institutions," he wrote. "They’ll mount mini-crusades against diversity, equity and inclusion departments, heavy-handed curriculums, and Maoist campus radicals. But actually run stuff? Make things better? Sorry, wrong channel."

And the reason is simple, he concluded: "Here on the Grievance Network, the show is about complaints, not solutions."

Pentagon preps for possible Trump order to deploy troops on Americans: report

Daniel Hampton
November 8, 2024 

The Pentagon is bracing for "major upheaval" ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's second term, according to CNN, with officials already holding informal talks about how the Defense Department will respond if Trump orders to deploy active-duty military troops on his own citizens and makes good on promises to boot large swaths of workers. (Screengrab via CNN)

The Pentagon is bracing for "major upheaval" ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's second term, according to CNN, with officials already holding informal talks about how the Defense Department will respond if Trump orders it to deploy active-duty military troops on his own citizens and makes good on promises to boot large swaths of workers.

Trump insinuated during his campaign he could use the military as a law enforcement mechanism to carry out his plan for mass deportations, and that he would replace government workers with loyalists.

CNN reported Friday that the Pentagon is preparing for an overhaul and is mapping out scenarios ahead of time.

“We are all preparing and planning for the worst-case scenario, but the reality is that we don’t know how this is going to play out yet,” one defense official told CNN.

The department is also preparing for Trump and his appointees to issue illegal directives.

“Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders,” another defense official told CNN. “But the question is what happens then – do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?”

CNN's Kristen Holmes told anchor Jake Tapper on Friday the top contenders for several Cabinet positions have met with the Trump team's transition leaders. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bill Haggert (R-TN) are in the running for se
More names could be unveiled Friday, said Holmes, and Trump has been taking calls at Mar-a-Lago and going over a list of names.


The administration picked Susie Wiles for chief of staff to set a "no-nonsense" tone, Holmes reported.

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