Time to Prepare for a Fascist Government and Attacks on the Unions and Oppressed

Time To Prepare For A Fascist Government And Attacks On The Unions and Oppressed

The election of Trump and the fascists and racists who backed him is an existential struggle for workers, unions and the oppressed in the United States

Already, Trump and his gang are planning to issue hundreds of executive orders when he takes office to put Project 2025 into immediate effect. He will also staff the NLRB with fascists from groups like Turning Point USA, who will shut down all new organizing elections and seek to eliminate union power. Their plan is also to roll back the unionization of graduate students and stop the organizing drives at Amazon, non-union auto plants, Starbucks, and many other organizing campaigns.

Part of their plan will also be to target the UAW and its president Shawn Fain, who called Trump a scab and union buster. Already, the UAW is under monitorship and Trump will move to put the union in trusteeship, seize the strike fund and try to jail Shawn Fain with the help of his fascist Justice Department. He and his cronies will also use labor law against corrupt union leaders like the SEIU that have organized millions of workers. They will seek to remove their leaderships and seize their funds and stop them from being an obstacle to his union-busting agenda.

One reason that the UAW is under attack is because of its call to stop arms shipments from the US to Israel. UAW monitor Neil Barofsky has tried to stop this with a politically-motivated attack on Shawn Fain on trumped-up corruption charges. The genocide supported by both the Democrats and Republicans in Gaza shows the bourgeoisie’s real agenda, that is to help the Israelis keep control and expand the Zionist capture of Palestinian and Lebanese land. This is backed up by the US military machine.

The decline of US imperialism and the rise of fascism globally are directly connected. The US empire is in fundamental decline and it faces competition with China and other countries, which it will try to crush. Trump’s tariff war against China, Europe and other countries will further drive the world toward depression. The trade war and drive for new markets for capitalism is a fundamental element in the drive for war and occupation. Trump ran as a capitalist who would end wars but imperialist war is part and parcel of our economic system, the military industrial complex and war profiteering.

The AFL-CIO, the federation of US trade unions, was formed as a pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist institution in the 1950’s, with a top down structure that disempowers rank and file workers. The union bureaucracy has been integrated into the Democratic Party. This includes SEIU president April Verret, who was controller of the California Democratic Party, and Randy Weingarten, who is on the national committee of the Democratic Party.

The union bureaucrats refused to carry out any national campaign against Trump’s racist attacks, his attacks on immigrants, and his attempts to whip up xenophobia and Islamophobia. The massive deportation drive and terror campaign against migrants and immigrants will only be stopped by mass action in these communities in unity with organized labor. The union leadership have been totally silent about the threat of mass deportations and they are also opposed to any independent labor mobilization against fascism. This silence is complicity.

The battle between the two capitalist parties in the US and the swing to the right by the Democrats left a massive political vacuum in the United States and helped Trump and the fascist cabal around him come to power.

Workers and the unions are now confronted with a frontal attack on the right to organize. We are faced with the destruction of the National Labor Relations Board as the right attempts to destroy the labor movement and replace independent unions with company unions. The NLRB was a structure set up in 1935 to regulate labor after massive strikes and occupations during the 1930’s and 1940’s They will now use federal injunctions to stop labor activity and strikes and if these strikes become nationwide, they may call in the army to break them.

United fronts of workers and community organizations have historically played a critical role in the defense of the oppressed. In the 1930s, some 1.8 million immigrants of Mexican descent were deported in the Mexican Repatriation. This was opposed by a coalition of unions such as the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the International Workers of the World, civil rights groups such as the League of United Latin American Citizens, communists and socialists, and a wide array of community organizations. A coalition of labor unions and working class, community, and immigrants rights organizations is urgently needed to defend ourselves.

The UAW should take the lead and call a national conference on the threat of fascism and how to fight it. Only a conscious, organized working class can defend against these fascist assaults. Today, unionists and workers must fight for a united front against fascism, organizing within unions and communities to prepare for the state sponsored attacks that are coming.

We need to fight for a mass democratic labor party to politically challenge and organize against these attacks. We call on UAW President Shawn Fain to call a national convention to discuss and organize the militant sections of the working class in the formation of a labor party and for him to prepare now to run for president.

The United Front Committee For A Labor Party was formed to unite workers, unions and the oppressed to educate and organize for a labor party in the United States and fight to unite with workers internationally who face the same tasks. A US labor party must fight alongside workers to take power. We must unite internationally with workers throughout the world. We face the same issues and struggles globally. We now need to prepare for general strikes against the coming attacks and terror campaign.

At the same time Musk, Thiel, and other techno-fascists will start providing millions for the formation of fascist armed, organized gangs to harass, murder, and intimidate any political opposition to their fascist policies. UAW and union organizers will soon become physical targets by fascists, particularly in the South, to stop any organizing or to smash the present unions. Only united action by the entire working class can defeat the coming onslaught. We will have to organize defense guards to defend ourselves and immigrants, who will surely be assaulted by government thugs.

The time for education, organization and action is vital; this is a life and death question.

For More Information, Contact UFCLP at info [at] ufclp.org