As UK politicians start to echo Trump and Musk’s attacks on public sector workers, Eric Blanc writes on how workers are starting to fight back in the US – and what we can learn
“I’m a federal worker, and I feel like a canary in the coal mine right now—because what they’re doing to us is going to happen to the entire American public.”
That’s how Chris Dols, who works for the US Army Corps of Engineers and is the president of a local chapter of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, began his video response to Elon Musk announcing mass government cuts and job losses.
When Trump appointed Musk to lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency”, he launched a series of vicious attacks on workers. These aren’t just a threat to the specific federal (public sector) workers in the current line of fire. This is an ideological assault on the very principle of public services and presents real danger for workers everywhere.
“EFFICIENCY” = ATTACKS
Billionaires, not federal employees, are hoarding America’s wealth: total yearly pay for all 2.3 million civilian federal employees ($271 billion) is significantly less than Elon Musk’s personal net worth of $412 billion.
Musk’s reckless operation threatens enormous numbers of Americans. Without federal workers at sufficiently funded agencies, no one in the US would be able to receive benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or workplace safety protections, among many other essential services. Local schools and hospitals all across the country also depend on federal funding. Due to Trump’s budget chaos, health clinics across the US have already been forced to close.
The good news is that federal workers are surging into their unions. Over 14,000 workers joined the American Federation of Government Employees in the first month of this year, nearly totalling the number who joined in the previous 12 months. As the trade union movement saying goes, sometimes “the boss is the best organizer.”
WORKERS FIGHT BACK
No matter which lackeys are installed at the top of government agencies, they still ultimately depend on the labour of their employees. And workers’ resistance has already put a wrench in Musk’s operations.
Refusing to succumb to intimidation, unions of federal employees have sued to stop Musk. With union encouragement, most federal workers have rejected DOGE’s so-called buyout scheme through which they would “voluntarily” resign.
These are important first steps. But it’s going to take organizing and pressure from these workers to win.
How can federal workers win over the public and defeat these attacks on their jobs and essential services? Their best bet is to replicate the tactics that made possible the successful 2018 teachers’ strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, and beyond.
BUILDING ON WINS
Through these actions, public-sector workers beat back right-wing attacks on their profession and won major pay and student funding wins that affected millions, even though they took place in Republican-controlled states where unions were weak and public-sector strikes illegal. Here are the main lessons of their strikes:
Overcome scare tactics by speaking out. Fearing retaliation from above, most teachers in 2018 were initially scared to make their voices heard. But a few bold colleagues broke the climate of intimidation by taking a public stand early on. Nobody was fired or disciplined. Their early courage created space for countless more to speak out.
Escalate your actions. Especially because so many workers were initially scared, the movements grew by taking easy actions that could involve the largest number of workers. One tactic was “RedForEd” days in which everybody — both employees and community supporters — wore the same colour and posted selfies and group photos with messages about their cause. This generated momentum and showed the community the human face of the workforce.
Try to go viral. The red state strikes were initiated and coordinated largely over viral Facebook groups. Worker activists grabbed people’s attention through public actions and catchy digital content, getting co-workers involved organizing similar actions via digital tools. In person and local organizing was still crucial, but these movements needed digital tools and a big social media presence to coordinate and win at scale.
Persuade and involve the community. To seize the attention of the public and dispel narratives about “privileged, lazy public sector workers,” these movements understood that the only way for them to win big was by consistently emphasizing how their work — and their demands — benefited the larger community.
Get disruptive if necessary. Nobody wants to strike, especially when doing so could negatively impact community members. But since Republican legislators continued to refuse to back down, ultimately educators felt they had to walk out to save their schools. And with overwhelming popular support, they won big.
It’s hard to exaggerate the stakes. But by standing up in large numbers to defend federal workers and their services, we can isolate and eventually defeat Musk and Trump.
If we don’t, the consequences will be felt across the world.
- Read more in Eric Blanc’s new book, We Are The Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big (University of California Press, 2025)
