Trump is targeting Black women to fire
The wealthy and powerful want you to hate 23 million fellow workers who the federal, state or local governments employ. They include teachers, postal workers, hospital employees, and sanitation workers, as well as hundreds of other occupations. Their labor is essential.
Government employees account for one out of seven workers in the United States. Trump’s mass firings of federal employees and his cancellation of union contracts for 1.5 million of them are an attack on the entire labor movement.
Billionaire Elon Musk wanted to fire 80,000 people working for the Veterans Administration. The VA is still planning to get rid of 30,000.
If vets suffering from Agent Orange have to wait longer for treatment, well, that’s just too bad. To Trump’s Make America Great Again regime, the VA hospitals are dangerous examples of “socialized medicine.”
As many as 53 million people have died from HIV/AIDS worldwide. Yet the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has cut funding for efforts to create a vaccine.
The attacks on public workers go hand-in-hand with kicking millions off Medicaid. Wall Street’s ultimate aim is to privatize Social Security and Medicare.
For 50 years, the super-rich in the United States have feasted from super profits while destroying millions of union jobs. All working and poor people suffered a defeat when banksters got 50,000 New York City municipal employees fired in 1975, including 10,000 teachers.
Black women are special targets
It’s been Black women who’ve been hit hardest. Between February and March this year, 318,000 Black women lost their jobs despite the capitalist economy adding jobs.
Trump’s massive firings are a big reason. His job cuts have especially hit the areas where Black women are concentrated, like education and health.
That’s racism. All the attacks on DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — are attacks on Black, Indigenous and Latine workers.
Trump has tried to fire Lisa Cook, the first Black woman member of the Federal Reserve banking system’s Board of Governors. He has fired Carla Hayden, the first woman and first Black person to be Librarian of Congress.
Trump also dismissed Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black person to serve on the National Labor Relations Board. Meanwhile, a Trump-appointed prosecutor is seeking to jail the Black New Jersey congresswoman LaMonica McIver for trying to inspect an ICE concentration camp. That was McIver’s duty as a member of Congress.
Black women suffered the worst employment discrimination. It took years of struggle to open up jobs in the factories and offices.
In the 1930s, close to 80% of Black women workers in Cleveland were employed as maids and housekeepers. (“AlabamaNorth: African-American Migrants, Community, and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-45″ by Kimberley L. Phillips)
One of the longest battles was to get jobs in the virtually all-white Southern textile mills, which were then the region’s biggest industry. (“Hiring the Black Worker,” by Timothy Minchin.) But it was even harder to get office jobs.
Government jobs were often considered a safe haven. Black workers account for 29% of postal workers. Over 12% of federal employees are Black women.
Many of the better-paid Black workers in New York City are public employees. Neighborhoods like St. Albans in southeastern Queens — where Black home-owning families account for the majority of the population — are heavy concentrations of government employment.
When Trump’s lawyer and fellow bigot Rudy Giuliani was NYC mayor, he fired 21 times as many Black workers as white workers.
Democratic presidential administrations are also job cutters
Vice President Albert Gore bragged that he and President Bill Clinton got rid of 100,000 employees. What Gore didn’t mention was that a majority of those fired were Black.
Trump is a fascist bully. The power of the people has to be organized to stop him.
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