To borrow an old political cliché, the time has come to throw the (cry) baby (Trump) out with the bathwater

 

For all his faux-populism and talk of making America great again, Donald Trump never did much of anything for working people during his four years in office. Their votes secured his victory in 2016 when he at least talked the talk about bringing back jobs. The spoiled rich man’s son never meant to walk the walk, however.

 

When the pandemic hit, one of Trump’s first actions was to make sure poultry and meatpacking plants stayed open, regardless of what safety conditions their cheapskate owners likely didn’t put in place.

 

“It is nothing short of outrageous for the president to use this power to protect an industry notorious for mistreating workers and putting profits above safety,” The Southern Poverty Law Center said a statement late last April. “The industry has already proven unwilling to protect the people working in these plants in the face of this pandemic, a failure that has resulted in community spread, illnesses and deaths.”

 

And who works at these plants? Immigrants, Latinos, black people, poor whites, that’s who. Not exactly a group Trump has ever given much attention.

 

With the closing of polls in the November election, Trump’s Labor Department froze the wages of farmworkers. The ruling against frontline, essential workers came at the same time the Trump Administration predicted a sharp increase in the profits of agribusiness.

 

In addition, growers are hoping the conservative U.S. Supreme Court next year will dump the so-called “access rule” that allows union organizers to talk with workers on the grower’s property mornings before work begins. The Agriculture Labor Relations Act of 1975 made such access legal and protected under federal law.

 

Trump has waged war against unions even within the federal government, working to undermine the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and its efforts on behalf of the 250,000 members who work with the Veterans Administration. He has issued orders limiting union rights and access to workers, and created what In These Times magazine called “an atmosphere of fear and retaliation” while miring contract negotiations into an impasse.

 

Workers have little recourse under Trump’s National Labor Relations Board, which has become what Michelle Chen of Nation magazine called “a watchdog for the national Chamber of Commerce and Trump’s buddies.” Led by anti-labor, pro-big business appointees, the board has dumped Obama-era rulings and decisions that favored workers while consistently sided with management in making organizing more difficult. At the same time, the NLRB workforce itself has undergone a 20 percent reduction in the past three years.

 

All of these actions bring to mind something I read recently in author Al Price’s compelling memoir Gravel and Grit. Recalling the virulent opposition to a unionization effort and strike at a textile plant in his hometown of Water Valley, Mississippi, in 1952, Price wrote, “Why would others want to keep you down economically? Afraid you might get ahead of them? Is greed and selfishness that ingrained in our culture and psyche?”

 

Well, it is for some people, and one of them sits in the White House.

 

The big crybaby in the White House still clings to his delusion that he actually won the election and that only massive fraud can prevent him from serving a second term as president. However, as far as workers are concerned, this is one time, if ever there was a time, that the old political  cliché of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” is a most appropriate thing to do.