Unions vow to lead with solidarity as second Trump administration looms

This article appeared in The Union Advocate’s January 2025 print edition, which can be viewed on the Recent Issues page.

Three weeks after Election Day, members of more than 25 local unions gathered at the St. Paul Federation of Educators’ offices. After sharing a meal and making introductions, they began discussing ways to support each other and fight back during a second Trump administration.

The event, SPFE President Leah VanDassor said, gave union members an opportunity to cope with fear and uncertainty by building community and solidarity. But she acknowledged very real threats ahead.

“They’re going to come after labor, it’s just a matter of time,” VanDassor said. “At SPFE, we feel like we can’t sit still for two years and hope it will change if we get better people back in office. Education is on the chopping block. Public unions are on the chopping block. Let’s figure out ways to be proactive.”

Similar meetings are surely taking place in meeting halls across the state and country after an election that produced mixed results locally but a devastating outcome on the federal level, with an incoming president and congressional majorities that are hostile to workers’ bargaining rights, committed to slashing public services and bent on settling scores with their perceived political opponents.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, the nation’s highest ranking labor leader, called the election results “a blow for every worker who depends on our elected leaders to fight for our jobs, our unions and our contracts.”

In the months before the election, Shuler and other labor leaders tried to sound the alarm about Project 2025, a 900-page document drafted by staffers in Trump’s first administration that outlined plans for a return to power. Proposals would undermine unions’ bargaining power, gut federal agencies and replace federal civil servants with Trump loyalists.

“The Project 2025 agenda promises to dismantle labor unions because we are a pillar of democracy and a check on power,” Shuler said. “We’ve seen assaults on our fundamental rights before. In the days, months, and years ahead, labor’s task will be to defend working people when it happens again.”

Minnesota unions, meanwhile, will find a changed landscape at the Capitol in St. Paul when the 2025 legislative session begins Jan. 14. While labor-endorsed DFLers maintained their majority in the Senate, the two parties are arranging to share power in the House, with 67 Republicans and 67 Democrats.

The Minnesota AFL-CIO, which led the Labor 2024 political campaign, had hoped to return labor-friendly majorities to both chambers.

The nine-week campaign mobilized more than 550 union volunteers, who engaged fellow union members in thousands of conversations during door-knocks and phone banks across the state. The campaign also included worksite visits, election mail, digital ads and more.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham credited union volunteers with helping “buck the national trend” and deliver Minnesota’s electoral college votes to Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The labor-to-labor campaign also worked to re-elect Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Angie Craig in Minnesota’s most tightly contested congressional district.

As for the change in power coming to Washington, D.C., Burnham pledged that Minnesota’s unions will “refuse to be divided” no matter what comes their way.

“Like we have for generations, we accept this election’s results,” she said. “However, if the incoming administration attacks the rights of workers – no matter where they were born, what they look like, how they pray, who they love, or how they identify – Minnesota’s labor movement will continue to stand in solidarity and fight like hell.”

What, exactly, that fight will look like is still taking shape in union halls like SPFE’s.

“At the end (of the meeting), everyone kind of came to the same conclusion,” SPFE’s VanDassor said. “We need to have one-on-one discussions with our union siblings, figure out where we’re at, keep in contact and plan our next steps.

“It’s not like, ‘Here’s the plan, here’s the magic bullet.’ But we can’t hunker down either.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor