In an escalation toward more traditional fascism, Donald Trump’s administration – acting on behalf of the capitalist class – has consistently attacked labor rights over the past year. In particular, the Trump regime has targeted federal worker unions for complete destruction.
During his first term, Trump targeted labor unions through attacking their specific rights. Executive Orders 13836, 13837, and 13839 were issued as a package in 2018 and stripped labor unions of their offices, severely limited duty time allotted to represent workers, and empowered federal agencies to fire workers without due process. However, federal workers’ basic right to a union remained.
The current version of Trump fascism wants to tighten the noose. As contemplated in Project 2025, the Trump regime has instead set out to completely nullify all labor rights for the majority of the federal workforce. In a March 19, 2025 order, President Trump excluded dozens of agencies from coverage under the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute. This statute, adopted in 1978, gives most federal workers the right to form a union, be represented by a union, and be free from retaliation or harassment due to union activity.
By exempting dozens of federal agencies from federal labor protections, Trump nullified hundreds of collective bargaining agreements and memoranda of understanding between federal unions and the federal government. With these contracts go the right to representation in disciplinary meetings, duty time for union officials, dues deductions, progressive discipline, safety and health requirements, and much more.
Facing a threat to their very existence, unions like AFGE and NTEU have challenged this executive order in the courts. While the rank and file of these unions have been prepared to take to the streets if not stop work, leadership has insisted on keeping the fight within the judiciary system. This decision comes due to massive pressure from the Democratic Party and the government itself not to create too big a wave.
Nonetheless, the unions have fought hard in federal court across the country to reinstate the various contracts. One such contract, the Master Collective Bargaining Agreement between AFGE and the VA, was recently ordered fully reinstated by a federal judge in Rhode Island. Judge DuBose placed an injunction on the implementation of Trump’s March executive order on the basis that it undermined congressional intent and violated fundamental rights to free association.
Judge DuBose’s ruling should have been a huge victory for federal labor, as AFGE represents 180,000 workers at the VA alone. However, outside a cursory memo stating the contract was in effect, the VA has refused to materially restore the MCBA’s provisions. Essentially, the VA is refusing to follow the court order in the hopes that they can tread water until the Supreme Court officially upholds Trump’s order.
Local unions from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Altoona, Pennsylvania, have demanded that their local management abide by the MCBA per the federal court order. Local leadership has flatly refused, stating they are “awaiting guidance” from the VA central office.
The question must be posed: How can a federal agency so blithely refuse to obey a federal court order? Simply answered, because the entire system is on VA’s side and the VA knows it.
It does not take an attorney to see the path of litigation around Trump’s anti-labor executive orders. VA lawyers will appeal Judge DuBose’s decision, and regardless of that appeal’s result, the case will eventually end up before the Supreme Court of the United States. Currently, the Court is composed of mostly right-wing judges that have rubber-stamped the vast majority of Trump’s fascist reforms. Government agencies like the VA are confident that upon reaching the Supreme Court, Trump’s smashing of labor will prevail.
However, to reduce the role of the Supreme Court to its composition at any given time is to miss the point of the Supreme Court, and really of the entire judiciary. Marxist scholar and thinker Sam Marcy analyzed the role of the Supreme Court in capitalism in 1989 in the wake of an anti-reproductive rights decision. Marcy analyzed that the Supreme Court has long played the role of ensuring the people’s will is not executed through the law, but instead the will of the few ultra-wealthy.
Marcy wrote:
“So much talk goes on about democracy, about the rights of the people to vote and to elect, but when it gets down to the really critical issues, political power is concentrated in undemocratic bodies that are removed from the control of the masses.”
This quote holds no truer than when applied to the current Supreme Court and the entire judiciary. Even with a minor victory at the district court level, the judiciary ultimately will not allow labor unions and the workers they represent to prevail over the capitalist system. After all, the entire capitalist system, not just Trump, would see all working class organizations – no matter how weak – completely destroyed. Since its inception, the Supreme Court was intended to rule as an organ against the will of the masses of workers.
History bears this out. 2022 saw Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which ended a woman’s fundamental right to an abortion. In 1944’s Korematsu v. United States, the Court upheld Franklin Roosevelt’s Japanese internment policy. During the 1930s, the Supreme Court intervened to strike down New Deal legislation, including the sweeping National Industrial Recovery Act. Before that, the Supreme Court enforced segregation in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson and, in the 1857 Dred Scott decision, ruled that Black people held no rights as citizens and that Congress had no power to restrict slavery’s expansion.
The judicial branch of the United States government, from the highest court on down, has never served at the pleasure of the people or in the interests of justice. It has only ever served on behalf of the few and the wealthy. In looking for an antidote to this poison, worker organizations
should look to the streets, because the capitalist courts will only ever fulfill their founding purpose.
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