ORLANDO—“We will not sit down! We will not give up. We will stand up, and we will fight until hell freezes over. And when it freezes over, we put on ice skates, and we don’t stop, we just keep on fighting.” With those words, Rev. Terrence L. Melvin, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) President, continued that organization’s fighting focus on countering the MAGA agenda through united, worker-led action.
With Donald Trump’s ongoing attacks on the labor movement and Black elected officials in mind, along with his recent display of racist disrespect toward South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, chants of “We have nothing to lose but our chains!” echoed through the convention hall as over 800 delegates from 60 unions gathered for the CBTU convention in Orlando.
This year’s theme—Unbought, Unbossed, Unstoppable—set the tone for a fiery opening session on Thursday, where labor leaders condemned the Trump administration’s attacks on workers and called for unified, worker-led resistance. But for the first time in the coalition’s history, founder and former president William “Bill” Lucy was not present. He passed away at the age of 90 last September.
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler didn’t mince words: The first 120 days of Trump’s billionaire-backed agenda have been “designed to put workers in the background and the billionaires in the driver’s seat.”
Rev. Terrence L. Melvin, CBTU President, went further, accusing the federal government of being dismantled “by the rich, for the rich.” Mentioning union-prepared toolkits for action that were available, Melvin called on all the convention participants to take those toolkits home and take up the work of actively resisting the Trump agenda in their workplaces and communities.
“Many of us, including our veterans, have lost vital services while others have lost their jobs,” Melvin said. “There is a full-on assault against working people.”
Shuler warned that the administration’s policies aren’t just an assault on unions—they’re a deliberate attack on Black workers and history itself. An example of the attack on history is the lies about “anti-white violence” that Trump used to attack South African President Ramaphosa, as well as those he uses to validate his crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Black and white: Unite and fight!
“What we’re seeing every day coming out of this administration is not just an attack on federal workers. It’s not just an attack on our unions. It’s a direct and intentional attack on Black workers in this country. And it’s an attempt to erase Black history,” she said.
How do we move forward? Schuler pointed to the historic alliance between the Civil Rights and labor movements as proof that unity is workers’ greatest strength.
“There’s a reason that in the 1960s and ’70s, the Civil Rights Movement and the labor movement came together—it was because we knew being divided did not serve us.
“Letting powerful interests and corporations pit us against each other while they suppressed our wages and our opportunities made us all worse off.”
Union-buster-in-Chief
The stripping of collective bargaining rights from nearly a million federal workers, Shuler said, marks “the single biggest act of union busting in American history.”
“And going after Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, and food assistance? The services that we as working people all count on? Shame!” she declared. Medicare and Social Security are programs that are paid into by workers over the course of their working lives, not “handouts” from taxes, as the MAGA administration would like to suggest.
She dismissed the idea that the capitalist class deserves more tax breaks while workers struggle under speed-ups, pay-cuts, and an all-out assault on our social safety nets.
“I have not met one worker who says it makes sense for a CEO to make 268 times what the average worker makes in this country…while we struggle and live paycheck to paycheck.
“I’ve not met one person who says Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos need more tax breaks and that money should come from my mom’s Medicare or Social Security check.”
The labor movement’s mission, Shuler argued, is to rally workers behind a common-sense agenda and “rewrite the rules of the economy.”
Erasing Black workers—from schools to the Postal Service
Melvin criticized Trump for waging a cultural and economic war against Black workers and their families.
“Donald Trump is determined to shut down, or blow up, all paths to prosperity and happiness for Black folk. He wants to erase us. He wants to remove our presence from white space and silence our voices.”
He pointed to the administration’s recent demand to withhold Title I funding from schools that promote DEI programs.
“What is wrong with diversity? What is wrong with equity? We still ain’t got our 40 acres and a mule. What is wrong with inclusion—bringing everybody into the boat?”
Meanwhile, Trump’s “Big Beautiful Tax Bill” favors the big capitalists while squeezing working families.
“The Grifter-in-Chief,” Melvin said, “who falsely claims he ‘gets’ working people, pressured House Republicans to pass a tax bill that will put more in the pockets of the top 0.1%, while middle-income families actually take a cut. And poor people will be crushed with even less. Less housing. Less food, less healthcare. Less hope.”
Retaliation against Black labor leaders
Melvin connected Trump’s rampant union-busting to the retaliation against Black labor leaders who opposed his presidency and organized to prevent it, and now stall the worst aspects of it from being implemented.
“Donald Trump illegally stripped millions of federal workers,” represented by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), “of their union contracts. And unions like NEA, AFT, AFSCME, and the Postal Workers have been denied tens of millions of dollars in union dues payments.”
Despite fatigue among some Black activists, especially as mass demonstrations are seemingly led by white people, Melvin insisted: This is Black workers’ fight too.
“When nearly one of five federal workers is African American, this is our fight. When many of the federal agencies targeted by those Musk-cuts have the highest percentage of Black workers, this is our fight. When the threat of privatization of the Postal Service will disproportionately devastate Black postal workers and Black households, this is definitely our fight!”
International solidarity
Melvin also emphasized that working-class solidarity doesn’t stop at U.S. borders—it extends globally, from South America to Palestine. He condemned Trump’s “imperialist policies” and reaffirmed CBTU’s recognition of Canada’s right to national sovereignty.
He further condemned the Trump administration’s racist refugee policy, which fast-tracks white South Africans while deporting Black and Brown migrant workers in brutal, and often illegal, ICE raids on places of work, worship, and learning. He also instituted “golden visas” to enable wealthy foreigners to move to the U.S.
“Dripping in racism and hypocrisy, this administration has created a special refugee program, exclusively for white South Africans… Now, a privileged minority whose ancestors oppressed and exploited Black South Africans for decades” is being given special refugee status in the U.S.
In retaliation, he said, the U.S. has cut diplomatic ties with South Africa for condemning Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza and charging them with genocide at the International Court.
“The CBTU stands on business when we condemn the exclusive whites-only refugee policy and the taxpayer-funded resettlement of white South Africans in this country. We call on the State Department to restore full diplomatic relations with the South African government immediately.”
Furthermore, a few of the many resolutions to be debated over the course of the next few days is a resolution to remove Cuba from the so-called “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list and to fight to end the “Liberation Day” tariffs Trump imposed on the rest of the world as well as to protect working-class jobs around the world.
Working-class Black, brown, Asian, white, and all oppressed people have to unite in struggle for an economic and political system that meets the needs of working communities in the United States and internationally.
The fight continues this summer
In a post-speech interview with People’s World, Shuler said the labor movement is gearing up for a major escalation this summer to defend working people, their families, and this country from the billionaire class’s assault.
“We want to make sure we get the most people engaged, fired up, and mobilized as possible. We need to have the labor movement be the center of that fight back,” she told People’s World.
With the billionaire-backed attacks on workers intensifying, the message from the first session of the 54th International CBTU Convention was clear—working-class unity is non-negotiable.
“We’ve got to be unified like we’ve never been unified before. We’ve got to join hands like we’ve never joined hands before. We can’t turn back. We got to keep moving forward!” Melvin declared.
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