WASHINGTON—Led by National Nurses United and the United Electrical Workers (UE), union opposition is rising to President Donald Trump’s now-indefinite “running” of Venezuela.
The AFL-CIO cited strong and detailed opposition from the International Trades Union Confederation of which it is a member, though several international unions that opposed prior wars in prior decades, such as the Machinists and the Auto Workers, have yet to comment.
UAW opposed the Vietnam War, and its Local 4811 in California opposes this war, too. The Machinists denounced war-making under their late President, William Winpisinger.
But thousands of IAM members work for major defense contractors, such as Bath Iron Works in Maine, Boeing in Washington State, and the General Dynamics Electric Boat shipyard in New London, Conn. So IAM, under the current President Brian Bryant, is silent so far.
Other unions are silent because they’re split between members who at one time served in the military and those who did not—and between members who voted for Trump and those who did not. That group includes some building trades unions, both big postal unions, and the Government Employees.
The union statements against the invasion began on January 3 with National Nurses United and UE. The nurses linked the invasion and war spending to the domestic cuts, especially in Medicare and Medicaid, that would force hospitals to close and millions of people to lose health care coverage. The union again said Medicare For All could solve that.
Trump sent the troops into Venezuela around midnight on January 2-3, to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. His troops had been training for weeks at a secret compound in Kentucky, built to the exact specifications of Maduro’s home in Caracas.
Before the ground forces landed, Trump sent 120 planes to bomb and strafe Caracas, and his troops killed dozens of people in the invasion. They put Maduro and Flores on a U.S. Navy ship headed for the infamous base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they were transferred to a plane and flown to New York for indictment on six-year-old narco-trafficking charges.
And then Trump bragged about it in a wide-ranging two-hour interview with the New York Times, where, when asked how long U.S. troops would stay in Venezuela and how long the U.S. would run the country, he answered the equivalent of “Who knows?”
The strongest opposition came from National Nurses United, which linked Trump’s war to his cuts in human services, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, and from UE, an independent union.
The earliest opposition, though, came from the Chicago Teachers Union. It tweeted a call for members to attend a mass anti-war rally in the Loop on the afternoon of January 3. And when Trump started saber-rattling and muttering during his prior 2017-21 term about invading Venezuela, CTU’s House of Delegates, its legislature, approved a full-blown denunciation of it.
“EMERGENCY PROTEST: NO WAR ON VENEZUELA. STOP THE BOMBINGS. Join us in the streets to demand an end to U.S. aggression against Venezuela. TODAY @ Federal Plaza–5 PM,” CTU’s tweet read.
“RESOLVED, that the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) publicly states its opposition to any military invasion of the sovereign state of Venezuela, and insists on dialogue, diplomacy, and negotiation as the means to resolve this crisis,” its statement during Trump’s first term read.
“And be it further RESOLVED, that the CTU advocate for the suspension of the current sanctions against Venezuela, and for the U.S. to cease all threats, military mobilization, and interference in the economic and internal politics and affairs of the Venezuelan people; and respect the right of self-determination of this sovereign nation in accordance with U.S. stated commitment to the rule of law.”
Excerpts of other anti-war statements include:
United Electrical Workers (UE): “Our government’s escalating attacks on Venezuela are unconstitutional, immoral, and a massive waste of resources. The idea that Venezuela represents a military threat to the U.S. is patently absurd. The use of the U.S. military to carry out lethal attacks on fishing boats and seize oil tankers amounts to simple murder and piracy. We demand our government immediately cease these attacks, and Congress exercise its power to rein in this overreach by the executive branch.
“Foreign and military policies should defend the interests of working people, not the wealthy. UE has long believed the labor movement should promote its own foreign policy based on diplomacy and labor solidarity.” This commitment to diplomatic rather than military solutions led delegates” to the union’s last convention “to demand the U.S. government ‘cease using U.S. military and intelligence agencies in interventions against nations which pose no threat to the American people’ and, specifically, that the U.S. ‘c]ease all harassment of and economic sanctions on Venezuela.’”
National Nurses United: “In any military conflict, nurses are deeply aware that working-class people suffer the most.
“Nurses are outraged the Trump administration ignored the Constitution and committed an imperialist act of war over the weekend without approval from Congress and without backing from our patients, working-class people across the United States who are already struggling here at home to afford basic necessities such as health care, food, and housing.
“Trump and the Republicans have spent the past year openly waging war on working-class people here at home, gutting Medicaid, refusing to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that keep our patients’ premiums from skyrocketing, and proving they ‘run’ the United States to benefit only billionaires and corporations, all while they have prioritized spending on war abroad.
“Now, they want to ‘run’ Venezuela. It couldn’t be more clear that, regardless of how one feels about Nicolás Maduro, this mission is an extension of Trump’s fascist allegiance to the billionaire class, as he brazenly declares that U.S. oil companies will now go in and control Venezuelan oil.”
And voters “do not want to continue on in the direction of imperialism and forever wars…Our patients demand investment in building a healthy society here at home, so people do not have to choose between paying for medication or keeping a roof over their family’s heads, not investment in sending troops to invade other countries.”
UAW Region 9A: “We cannot have peace as long as oil and corporate interests rule our politics,” said Regional Director Brandon Mancilla, an Auto Workers executive board member. His region includes a high proportion of university research assistants, teaching assistants, and other staffers—many of whom hit New York City’s streets to campaign for new Democratic Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who also opposes Trump’s Venezuelan invasion. He bluntly told Trump that by phone.
UAW Local 4811: “The Trump administration’s bombing of Caracas and its abduction of Venezuela’s head of state are indefensible acts that will benefit only the billionaire class and expand their xenophobic, anti-immigrant agenda. It is time for” lawmakers “to find the courage to oppose these actions, which break international law and would be condemned immediately if committed by any other world leader.
‘Trump and his administration spent 2025 attempting to slash funding for public higher education in this country…and at the same time pouring millions of dollars into its mass deportation and weapons export programs. Now they are spending billions on a regime change operation that 70% of Americans oppose, with the explicit goal of installing a pliant government in Venezuela and creating profits for oil corporations.
“Every strike by an American bomber costs millions of dollars that could be spent educating Californians and finding cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease. The representatives that our state sends to Washington have the power to halt this betrayal of the public interest.”
The San Francisco Labor Council: “The same interests that want to run Venezuela and reclaim the nation’s oil profits are the same that keep us working longer hours for less pay, with no health care, and little retirement and job security. We need to prioritize addressing the crisis of poverty and inequality at home, instead of threatening to destabilize countries abroad.”
The May Day Strong Coalition, a group of unions and community organizations organizing against Trump’s billionaire agenda, echoed the anti-war sentiment.
“Millions are losing health care coverage, grocery prices are rising and we can’t pay our rent, but Trump would rather occupy Venezuela for big oil,” May Day Strong e-mailed, sharing a petition for workers to write to Congress to say no to war.
“Under the banner of support occupation and pay, the coalition is organizing protests at Chevron and Citgo gas stations nationwide, hitting the pocketbooks of billionaire oil tycoons Tim Dunn and Paul Singer,” their e-mail added. Those events are scheduled for January 10.
But after Trump’s ICE agents shot and killed driver Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis—a killing which drove the city’s normally mild-mannered mayor into unprintable obscenities twice in one press conference—May Day Strong said it is linking the struggles against the war at home and abroad.
“From Caracas to Minneapolis, militarized aggression is unifying the opposition to billionaires and their authoritarian impunity,” that coalition said. Its e-mail added: “The Trump regime is seizing control of the mineral and energy wealth of Venezuela and handing it over to Big Oil. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s ICE militia is attacking our communities while enriching private prison corporations and the Silicon Valley companies that sell Trump surveillance tech.
“It will take mass organizing if we have any hope of grinding the war machine to a halt.”
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