PITTSBURGH—The Communications Workers of America, at their convention here this week, took on the Trump administration on two fronts – they warned of the dangers he poses to democracy at home, and they challenged his support for Israel’s Netanyahu regime by calling upon the U.S. to recognize Palestine.
Donald Trump and his corporate backers are a giant threat to the future of U.S. democracy, endangering an independent judiciary, a free press, a responsive Congress, and private institutions, CWA President Claude Cummings declared this week.
“We once again find ourselves in the age of robber barons who have captured and corrupted our government,” Cummings told the convention’s 879 delegates and hundreds of alternates and guests. “We are seeing the rise of an authoritarian regime.”
Cummings’s speech is in line with that of other union leaders, who have become increasingly caustic about Trump’s fascistic actions. Labor’s fightback, backed by the CWA, now includes mass mobilization for marches and demonstrations on Labor Day.
On foreign policy the union took a dramatic step by becoming the first major national union to call upon the U.S. to recognize Palestine as a nation. In the last few weeks many other countries have joined a growing list of nations calling for Palestinian recognition. The right-wing Netanyahu regime in Israel has been dead set against such recognition.
The resolution on Gaza read, in part, “CWA again demands an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the return of all hostages and that all steps are taken for the immediate and unhindered delivery of critical humanitarian aid to Gaza. In addition, we join the calls for a permanent two-state solution for the region and as such demand the U.S. government join the list of countries that formally recognized a Palestinian state.”
Cummings added a sharp political angle to the fightback against Trump’s domestic policies. “We will no longer direct our political spending to ineffective third-party Super PACs run by consultants who are out of touch with the realities of everyday Americans,” he declared.
For many trade unionists, lawsuits, bus tours, and electoral politics are all important, but they want to see opposition to Trump policies stepped up to include things like a mass march on Washington and more frequent acts of civil disobedience led by labor.
Favored the corporations
“As was the case during Carnegie and Frick’s time”—the Robber Barons of the 1890s—the GOP-named six-justice Supreme Court majority, including Chief Justice John Roberts and three justices Trump named “put their thumb on the scale in favor of corporations,” Cummings said.
The corruption actually preceded Trump, via the court’s party-line Citizens United ruling, by a 5-4 vote in. 2010, Cummings noted.
That ruling and several following it “allowed a new generation of oligarchs bent on seizing control of our country to use their obscene wealth to take control of our politics, and in decision after decision they have sided with corporations and taken power away from the working class who make this country run,” he declared.
“Which brings me to Donald Trump. Trump and the billionaires who funded his campaign want to take control of our lives and our futures. They are ransacking federal programs, shutting down essential services to put more money into their own pockets and throwing millions of people out of work, including thousands of CWA members.”
Appropriate for the leader of a union of communications workers, Cummings tackled the attacks by the Trump administration on freedom of the press. One way to hamstring dissent, he said, is to intimidate and strangle the freedom of the press. Without a free press, he said, there is little check on an unfettered executive, Trump.
“The founders of our country established a government of checks and balances so no one person could gain full control of the levers of power. Now, we are witnessing something none of us—none of us—ever thought we’d see in the United States: The rise of an authoritarian regime.”
One way for Trump to cement his dictatorship is to “undermine independent media by defunding the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio and dismantling the remaining restrictions on media consolidation,” Cummings added. The Communications Workers’ National Association of Broadcast and Employee Technicians (NABET) represents the workers in both broadcast systems.
Cummings did not discuss other cases of broadcast moguls genuflecting to Trump, including paying thinly veiled Trump bribes to keep the white nationalist president off their backs. He did, however, mention media concentration, a key issue for both NABET and the News Guild, both CWA sectors.
Three chains now control most of the nation’s shrinking number of newspapers, with at least two of them—Gannett and Alden Global Capital, a shady and secretive hedge fund—putting profits before people, publication and information. The result is unpaid workers, broken families and news deserts.
“University presidents, partners in big law firms, media moguls, CEOs, and even some elected officials and heads of state” respond to Trump threats “by trying to appease him,” Cummings said.
“Doesn’t work that way”
“But it doesn’t work that way,” he exclaimed. “Donald Trump is a bully. And if you give a bully your lunch money on Monday, you better believe he’ll be back for more on Tuesday.
“Do you know who is not running scared? Us. Our union and our labor movement. We have a whole lot of experience standing up to bullies, whether it is a manager who thinks the contract doesn’t apply to them or a hothead at the bargaining table with a take it or leave it attitude.
“Yes, we have to take the threat to our democracy seriously. But when the bullies come for us, for our co-workers and our families do we back down? No!…We fight back.”
Trump not only cowed the mainstream media, but he also carried out the biggest case of union-busting in U.S. history—trashing 30 union contracts covering a million federal workers—Cummings said.
“Donald Trump wants to ensure any boss can fire any worker for any reason or no reason at all,” the CWA president emphasized. “He’s making it clear that as long as he’s in charge, union contracts can be ignored and his administration will have the boss’s back. He’s saying experience and competence don’t matter. His priority is to make sure we are too scared to demand what we’re owed.”
And the CWA president added a long list of Trump’s other anti-democracy moves including firing National Labor relations Board members, pardoning the violent January 6th insurrectionists, prioritizing loyalty to him over competence for federal nominees, seizing the authority of Congress, deploying the military illegally in cities, ignoring court orders, and firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“The unfettered power that Donald Trump and his corporate backers are seeking is extremely dangerous. The rapid progress they have made rolling back the basic democratic system we have spent almost 250 years trying to perfect is alarming,” Cummings declared.
“The founders of our country established a government of checks and balances so that no one person could gain full control of the levers of power.
“Members of this administration show no sign of slowing down their attacks. Our union has always been at the forefront of protecting our democracy and we cannot let up.”
Cummings admitted some members oppose “legislative and political participation…and cede the fights to the army of corporate interests” that now dominates the U.S. He rejected that.
“Challenging the Trump administration in the courts and winning in 2026 are critically important, but they are not enough. No one is coming to save us. We must save ourselves…We are all in the same boat, all facing the same future. Win or lose, we’re all we have.”
“We will save ourselves by using our collective power to bargain strong contracts for our members and to protect every worker in our labor movement. We stand shoulder to shoulder with allies across the country and across the globe. We are all in the same boat, all facing the same future and, win or lose, we’re all we have.
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