Missing from the Headlines

On March 27, 2025, the president carried out the biggest union-busting action in our nation’s history when he eliminated the collective bargaining rights of 75 percent of the federal workforce – that’s nearly a million people.¹ This unprecedented overreach has implications that reverberate beyond the federal workforce, signaling that union-busting is supported by the highest office in the land. In December 2025, all Democrats plus 20 Republicans in the House of Representatives joined together to pass a bill that would restore those rights, but that bill remains stuck in the Senate.²

The NLRB safeguards our right to organize and collectively bargain, making decisions in cases involving disputes between workers and employers. During the president’s first term, we saw a continual weakening of workers’ rights at the hands of the NLRB and its general counsel, Peter Robb. That reversed in 2021 as new appointees returned balance to the board.^3,4,5 We have again seen a sharp swing in the Board’ direction under the current administration.

Extraordinary attack. While it is not uncommon to replace general counsels, the president also took the unprecedented and likely illegal step of firing Gwynne Wilcox, a sitting board member. This has never occurred in the 90-year history of the agency. Wilcox remains sidelined. Without Wilcox on the Board, the NLRB lacked a quorum for 10 months last year, meaning it could not accept, hear, or decide cases, leaving many workers in limbo.

Anti-worker direction. In December 2025, two conservative Board members, Scott Mayer and James Murphy, were appointed, restoring the quorum and allowing the Board to operate as normal again. In January, Crystal Stowe Carey was appointed as General Counsel. As a testament to the new leaning of the Board, both Carey and Mayer were past partners at Morgan Lewis, one of our nation’s most notorious union-busting law firms.⁶ In April, the President proposed to re-nominate David Prouty, the one Democrat currently on the Board and nominate a new Republican, James Macy. If both nominees are confirmed, it would give the conservative majority a 3-1 voting advantage, allowing them to overturn pro-worker precedents (which is something they are very unlikely to do with only a 2-1 advantage).

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) is a small but important federal agency that helps bring labor and management together when problems arise. Many USW contracts include utilizing FMCS when disputes occur. The administration made drastic cuts to staff in 2025, but had to backtrack following series of court actions. Since then, they have proposed eliminating the agency during each federal budget process – though Congress has rejected the push to date. Eliminating FMCS will mean longer and drawn-out contract negotiations, delays in implementing new union contracts, and the likelihood of more strikes and lockouts.^7,8,9

Over 11,000 Americans turn 65 each day. For the vast majority of Americans, Social Security will play a key role in making ends meet in retirement.¹⁰ The administration closed many field offices that seniors rely on for help, and they also fired 7,000 people from the agency’s already understaffed workforce. The result has been longer wait times, office closures, and a major strain on remaining staff.¹¹

Passed last July, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) used massive cuts to Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and other safety net programs to partially offset steep tax breaks skewed to the wealthiest and corporations. Estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) suggest that total health care cuts through OBBBA were more than $1 trillion. The actions represent the largest rollback of federal support to healthcare in American history. CBO further found that roughly 15 million Americans are expected to lose health insurance as a result.¹² The AFL-CIO ran an analysis on the bill’s outcomes and found that as hospitals and other care providers attempt to recoup costs of the growing number of uninsured, those with job-based insurance with likely see cost shifts to them – as high as $485 extra a year per person.¹³

While veterans are 6.1 percent of the U.S. population, they are 30 percent of the federal workforce, making them disproportionately impacted by the administration’s job elimination efforts. The administration announced in March 2025 that it would eliminate 80,000 jobs from the already-understaffed Department of Veterans Affairs. Following vocal opposition from unions, veterans’ groups and others, the goal was revised to 30,000 jobs. While lowered, critical concerns remain for the delivery of care at an already-understaffed agency with increasingly growing demands.¹⁴

The National Institute of Health (NIH) is the world’s leading institution to conduct and fund medical research on enhancing health, lengthening life, and reducing illness and disability. In addition to the research done directly at NIH, scientists across the country can conduct life-altering research through grants. Over 1,200 people at NIH have been fired under the current administration, from lab managers to scientists to administrative staff. Meanwhile, the NIH has cut grants for critical research across the country, impacting future health outcomes and local economies. USW members at the University of Pittsburgh, which is one of the largest recipients of NIH funding, felt the sting. Fortunately, thanks to a strong fight, favorable court rulings, and a Congress willing to override the president’s budget cuts, funding remains largely stable – for now.¹⁵

Workforce cuts, along with office closures, at Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Mine Safety and Health Administration, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health will hinder our members’ ability to properly address everything from workplace health and safety complaints to whistleblower protections, to workplace research into health hazard concerns. These agencies need more staffing, not less. For example, it would take OSHA 185 years for inspectors to visit every workplace just once, and that estimate is from BEFORE last year’s staffing cuts began.¹⁶ The administration repeatedly proposes to eliminate government agencies like the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), which has played a key role in USW facilities when major chemical incidents and fatalities occur. CSB investigates an incident, then the information is used to protect workers in the future. CSB-produced videos are used widely in USW represented workplaces. Thanks to push back from our union and others, the CSB remains intact currently¹⁷; however, the administration has once again sought to eliminate all funding for the CSB in its budget request this year.¹⁸

The gains. In recent years, our union celebrated new standards that will protect workers in mining from silica exposure, address unsafe staffing levels in long-term care facilities, expand rights for workers to choose who will represent them during safety investigations, and ban ongoing uses of asbestos to protect people from cancer.^{21,22,23,24,25} In a win for USW members in oil refineries, chemical plants, and other workplaces utilizing significant volumes of chemicals, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) updated their enforcement manual for process safety management for the first time since 1994.²⁶ Additionally for our oil and petrochemical workers, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a strong, pro-worker Risk Management Program (RMP) standard in 2024. Other priorities were advancing in the rulemaking process, including a proposed rule on workplace heat exposure.²⁷

The rollbacks. The current administration issued an executive order on January 31, 2025, to deregulate government rulemaking. It holds that “for each new regulation issued, at least 10 prior regulations be identified for elimination.”²⁸ Rules that aren’t final – like workplace heat exposure – are not expected to advance, and the implementation of others that are final – like those previously mentioned – may not be implemented on their timelines or simply not enforced as a way to derail them.

We have already seen the significant impacts of this executive order: in December 2025, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it would rescind the safe staffing provisions for long-term care facilities.²⁹ In March 2026, EPA said it was going to reconsider the RMP rule, and it put forward a much weaker, more pro-industry proposal.³⁰ And then in early April, federal regulators quietly delayed the implementation of the new silica rule for miners. This rule was designed to protect workers – including many USW members – from high levels of silica dust, which is a significant contributor to black lung disease and silicosis. Both are incurable respiratory illnesses caused by breathing in toxic dust.³¹ All of these deregulatory rollbacks make workers less safe on the job.

Our union aggressively utilizes our trade laws to protect our industries when they are threatened by bad actors around the globe. We have advocated for fair trade for decades and recognize its power to lift up workers’ rights and provide economic benefits if done responsibly. Our fight has been bipartisan, pushing presidents and lawmakers of both parties to take trade actions, including enacting tariffs; we successfully encouraged actions by both President Trump and President Biden in the past eight years.

However, we have met a moment of deep concern as the president uses tariffs to go after longstanding trading partners and friends like Canada. Per former USW President Dave McCall, “Canada is not the problem. Indeed, Canada has taken steps to coordinate their trade policies with the U.S. to respond to unfair foreign trade, and applying across-the-board tariffs ultimately hurts workers on both sides of the border.”³²

Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill scored more wins for the wealthiest, with $4.5 trillion in tax cuts skewed to the wealthiest households and sweeping cuts to programs that help people with low and moderate incomes.³⁸ While that bill also included some pro-worker tax cuts (e.g., no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, etc.), those provisions were temporary and will phase out in a few years, whereas the tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and multinational corporations are permanent.

Consumers fall further behind without watchdogs to guard our money. The administration is fixated on gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which saves Americans more than $15 billion every year by reining in bad actors on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.³⁹ Russell Vought, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget as well as the co-author of Project 2025, currently leads the bureau. Project 2025 called for the elimination of the CFPB.⁴⁰