RFH 132 American Trade Unionism in the Face of Trumpism

Co-hosts Andrew Kliman and Gabriel Donnelly discuss Gabriel’s upcoming article “American Unionism and Trump: Where are the unions in the struggle against Trumpism?” set to be published soon in Marxist-Humanist Initiative’s publication With Sober Senses. The co-hosts, and the article, consider the state of trade unionism after Trump’s second election. In particular, they discuss the regulatory framework of federal labor law in America. Trump has already begun meddling with existing labor-law precedent, and the response from trade union leaders has been lacking. An important aspect of their discussion is the quandary that American trade unions find themselves in. The example of the Amazon Labor Union is used to show how difficult a “new beginning” can be. The ALU had seemed like a new moment in the American labor struggle, but they stumbled and were eventually subsumed into the Teamsters. Plus current-events segment: the co-hosts discuss embattled New York City mayor Eric Adams and Trump’s attempts to get Adams’s corruption charges dropped. They consider how Trumpism encourages corruption and cronyism, to ensure loyalty to Trump, and they discuss how this may be combatted.