
AUSTIN, Texas—Both workers and civil rights advocates face a tough road ahead when the Republican regime of Donald Trump takes office, Communications Workers President Claude Cummings warns.
But despite that forecast, which he presented at the AFL-CIO’s Martin Luther King Jr. commemorative conference in early January, Cummings held out hope for the delegates and allies of organized labor massed in Austin, Texas.
“We survived Trump’s first term, and we’ll survive this one, too, together. It’s as simple as that,” he declared.
Cummings’ speech to the conferees was long on revving delegates for the battle to come against an administration that he, like other union leaders, predicts will “put profits over people.
“The labor movement and the civil rights movement are both under attack by those who hope to keep the working class divided. They know that, united, we are unstoppable.”
Cummings offered solutions that were more general for the fight against Trump. One was to say that if workers and their allies “are blocked at the federal level,” thanks to anti-worker Republicans in control of the White House and Congress, “we will work at the state level.
“And I promise you this: We will not stop, we will not stop,” he said, to applause.
Another fight-back will be an increased emphasis on coalition-building and organizing more workers. Many unions, but not all, have been doing that organizing for years.
And AFL-CIO leaders have emphasized coalition-building ever since their late President Richard Trumka admitted several years ago that “we can’t go it alone any more.”
There is a catch
The catch to the coalition-building, which Cummings did not mention, is that labor provides ground troops and organizing chops for other causes, including the Democratic Party, but those groups often don’t reciprocate for workers.
Trump and his incoming plutocrats may be a convenient target for coalition-building. After all, Cummings pointed out, Trump is stocking his Cabinet and his administration with “billionaires interested only in amassing more wealth for themselves,” while dividing workers along class and racial lines using “misinformation and disinformation,” primarily on social media.
Such lies didn’t work for the 58% of union members whom Cummings said voted for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in last year’s election. That’s because at a time of high mistrust of institutions—including, though Cummings didn’t say so, Congress, the presidency and the press—union members trusted their unions to tell the truth.
Left unsaid: The lies worked for the rest of the country. Trump won the popular vote by just under two percent against Harris, though he did not get an absolute majority of all votes. He won all seven swing states, though, including states labor concentrated on. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada were among them.
Cummings did not minimize the problems ahead. Like speakers at prior MLK commemorations, he pointed out the economic injustice Dr. King often denounced, including at the famous 1963 March on Washington, is often deliberately forgotten or minimized in commemorations of his birth and career.
And he mentioned a notable disconnect in the last election, and one that has shown up before that, too. On issues, particularly ballot initiatives, voters side with workers. But many then balk at the logical next step: Voting for candidates who support those issues.
“When people are given the chance to vote directly on pro-worker issues, they often vote in favor of the change,” said Cummings, citing passage of a Denver, Colo., initiative writing the right for public sector workers to collectively bargain into city law.
He also defended another cause—diversity, equity and inclusion—that became a thinly veiled dog whistle for Trump and his right-wingers.
“Our diversity is our strength, and with that strength we will focus on spreading truth instead of fiction and on building class consciousness and economic solidarity,” Cummings said.
But Cummings warned that too many people, in the wake of Trump’s win and the right-wing takeover of the Senate and retention of the U.S. House, are in despair. He urged them not to yield.
“People are giving up the fight against corporate control,” Cummings said, without naming names. “Too many have thrown up their hands and forfeited their power to a strong man”—Trump—“who claims that ‘He alone can fix it.’
“Guess what? He won’t.”
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