WASHINGTON—The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists’ call for a workers’ march on Washington has a new endorser: the Federal Unionists Network.
The CBTU passed a resolution at its 2025 convention calling on the AFL-CIO to organize a national union day of solidarity to protest the Trump administration’s anti-worker policies—a move akin to the “Solidarity Day 1981” march in response to Ronald Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers and the breaking of their union, PATCO.
The Federal Unionists Network, or FUN, agrees with CBTU that the time for stepped-up labor action is now. As momentum builds from No Kings III toward May Day 2026, workers all across the country are shifting into overtime to build the broadest possible coalitions to defeat the Trump administration’s fascist policies, and FUN is at the center of the effort.
FUN began with dozens of rank-and-file federal workers across different agencies joining together on a WhatsApp group to push for a stronger Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA). Since the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) attacks and mass layoffs of public sector workers, though, FUN has been built up into a frontline fighter resisting Trump’s destruction of the public sector. It has led rallies across the country and struggled to strengthen federal worker union locals.
Some 300,000 jobs were cut and over 1.3 million workers lost union protections after Trump signed a March 2025 executive order cancelling collective bargaining contracts for the majority of the federal workforce. FUN has sought to galvanize the anger of workers towards militant class struggle unionism and encourage a re-imagining of a transformed post-Trump public service.
An important factor in the fightback has been the fact that the federal government is the largest employer of African Americans. So, the mass layoffs have had a disparate impact on the Black community and its pathways to higher incomes.
FUN has now joined other labor constituency groups, state federations of the AFL-CIO, and local labor councils around the country in endorsing the CBTU’s May 2025 call for a labor-led National Day of Solidarity and rally against the Trump administration’s anti-labor policies.
Given the fact that federal workers have borne some of the deepest attacks of the Project 2025 assault on the public service, FUN’s endorsement carries a lot of weight. Its base includes tens of thousands of federal workers around the country who belong to different agencies and different union locals, meaning its support for the CBTU’s proposal could have a major impact in galvanizing the federal workforce to lead in this fight for a renewed March on Washington.
The initiative from CBTU is proving to be the spark that was needed to get the working class moving, and FUN’s backing accelerates that momentum.
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