One Hundred Days of Trump Betrayal: The Fight for Workers’ Rights and Our Democracy

Although Donald Trump likes to claim he is standing up for workers, his first 100 days in office have been marked by relentless attacks on workers across the country and from all walks of life. Yet, workers are joining together, across industries and communities—to resist exploitation, defend their rights, and fight for a future rooted in dignity and democracy. We must continue to rise above the chaos.

Persecuting Immigrants

The regime’s vilification and government-sponsored persecution of immigrant workers is among its most dehumanizing and cruel actions. Trump weaponized a false “good immigrant vs. bad immigrant” narrative to justify sweeping attacks on immigrant communities of color. But the unlawful removal and imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia—a union worker with court-ordered protection and no criminal record—exposes the administration’s true goal: to dismantle due process and terrorize all workers, regardless of status.

Whether it’s workplace raids, targeting workers around schools and hospitals, efforts to dramatically expand mandatory detention, or threats of mass deportations, these actions are unconscionable.

Whether it’s workplace raids, targeting workers around schools and hospitals, efforts to dramatically expand mandatory detention, or threats of mass deportations, these actions are unconscionable. They are designed to cause widespread fear and harm in immigrant communities, undermine due process and other legal protections, push undocumented workers out of public life, and make them more vulnerable to exploitation—while driving down wages, rights, and working conditions for all workers, no matter their citizenship or immigration status.

Waging War on Civil Rights

The Trump administration also has launched a war on civil rights in all facets of life, and the workplace is ground zero. We must be clear that the administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility are designed to compel employers to abandon important programs that were thoughtfully and carefully developed to ensure that people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, workers with disabilities, and other marginalized groups have fair and equal access to good jobs and promotions.

Scrubbing diversity programs from the federal sector, and bullying the private sector, academia, and the legal industry to abandon their efforts to comply with our nation’s civil rights laws is an attack on the very meritocracy the administration falsely claims it is trying to promote. And the administration’s latest move to do away with disparate impact liability—one of the most potent ways to remedy discrimination that may look neutral on the surface but is insidious at the core—is yet another attempt to drive a stake through our nation’s civil rights protections.

Attacking the Federal Workforce

Trump has made common cause with billionaire Elon Musk to subject our nation’s federal public servants to constant attacks—from firings, threats of firings, strong-arm tactics to leave government service, and hostility toward those still on the job. More than 260,000 federal employees have already been fired or have taken promised buy-outs, and the administration says it’s only just beginning: they are trying to reclassify hundreds of thousands of workers on the so-called Schedule P/C, which would make it easy to fire them and replace them with political appointees.

The hollowing-out of the federal sector will have broader implications for all workers.

The hollowing-out of the federal sector will have broader implications for all workers: it will be harder for workers to ensure that they are paid the wages they’re owed, that they work in safe and healthy workplaces, that they receive the benefits they’re entitled to, and that their civil rights are protected.

Undermining Worker Protections and Unions

To make matters worse, Trump has also fired Democratic members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and the Merit Systems Protection Board—all moves designed to stymie remedies for workers who are subjected to illegal working conditions, including by the federal government itself. And Musk himself, whose companies were being investigated for alleged illegal union-busting, harassment, and discrimination, stands to profit by reducing the capacity of the government to enforce our laws.

Key worker protection agencies have been all but eviscerated, including the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that conducts scientific research on workplace health and safety (and is relied upon by employers to protect their workers); the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, which combats abusive workplace practices throughout the world; and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which ensures that federal contractors, who employ approximately 20% of the civilian workforce, comply with our civil rights laws. And a visit from Musk’s DOGE staff coincided with a massive breach of sensitive worker data from the NLRB.

Not content with these affronts to working people, the Trump regime is waging war on labor unions and the right of workers to collectively bargain with their employers. Through executive orders, Trump is trying to essentially eliminate unions for federal workers he deems have connections, however tenuous, to national security; and he has ended automatic dues collection for federal workers, an attempt to financially destroy the unions that represent public servants.

Organize and Resist!

Working people and their allies will continue to organize, resist, and demand the reversal of these policies and actions, and are calling on Congress to enact laws that guarantee workers the wages and benefits they need:

• Raise the minimum wage;
• Pass paid family and medical leave;
• Adopt serious protections against heat stress;
• Strengthen unemployment insurance;
• Make it easier for workers to form unions and collectively bargain with their employers; and
• Create a pathway for immigrant workers to gain work authorization and eventually citizenship.

These are just a few examples of truly pro-worker policies that will improve economic security and make life better for working people and their families.

Workers know the difference between rhetoric and reality—and they know their power.

Workers know the difference between rhetoric and reality—and they know their power. They see the harm that is being done by cruel, uninformed, and counter-productive policies, and they are organizing every day for a better future.

NELP joins in solidarity with workers across the country to denounce these 100 days of cruelty, to demand a stop to the attacks, and to mobilize for the bold, transformative policies that will improve workers’ lives, rebuild our democracy, and create a future rooted in dignity, equity, and justice for all.

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