- by Graham Holton
- The Guardian
- Issue #2151
No Kings protest in Sarasota, Florida. Photo: Aiden Marshall – wikimedia.org (CC0 1.0)
The US political organisation 50501 (50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement) sought to build a General Strike to coincide with the protests on 14 June against the Army’s 250th birthday and President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday. The military parade in Washington DC attracted few observers. In comparison “No Kings Day” saw more than five million protestors peacefully rally in hundreds of cities across the United States, in opposition to the Trump administration’s policies on tariffs cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and education, ICE’s illegal arrests and deportations, and the use of the military on the streets of American cities. In New York city, protestors blocked streets as far as the eye could see.
While mass demonstrations have an impact on popular opinion, the mass strikes have been far less reported. In the lead-up to to No Kings Day numerous strikes swept across various states in one of the largest coordinated labour actions in US union history. The AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations), an international federation of sixty-three labour unions, listed sixty-nine strikes.
Grocery workers, largely represented by the UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers), took a stand against the corporate grocery giants, Kroger and Albertsons. Coordinated negotiations gained support and popularity amongst the rank-and-file. Over 150,000 UFCW and Teamsters grocery workers organised strikes across the US. By doing so, the two unions demonstrated the collective power of the working-class on a national scale. It was the biggest union action since 2023, when a national strike on the Big 3 automakers by the UAW (United Auto Workers) brought the car industry to a standstill.
Trump’s sacking of NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) member Gwynne Wilcox was a preliminary step to the total, and unconstitutional, takeover of federal decision-making. NLRB officials, administrative law judges, federal members, or anyone who crosses Trump, can now be instantly fired, impacting 130 million civil service workers.
Matt Ginsburg, General Counsel of AFL-CIO, said Trump is the law, “he could dictate board decisions up and down the line, and there is no alternative. We could see situations where complaints” about unfair labour practices “wouldn’t even be issued” because board and rank-and-file members of the NLRB would be fired for defying Trump. The federal agency protects employees’ rights to join unions and improve working conditions. Chief Starbucks stockholder, Howard Schultz, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos hate unions and the NLRB. They have sued to get the board declared unconstitutional in federal courts with Trump-appointed judges.
IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) joined the AFL-CIO and eighteen national labour organisations urging the Senate to remove a dangerous provision from the budget reconciliation bill that bans states from enacting or enforcing AI (artificial intelligence) protections. The proposed federal provision,would nullify these vital state-level protections for the next decade, leaving workers vulnerable to unchecked AI abuses and eliminating the states’ authority to respond to emerging threats. IATSE members face significant threats to their livelihoods from AI.
Throughout June thousands of workers from across the US, from numerous sectors, organised unions to improve workers’ rights, conditions and bargaining power. Union worker wages are 11.2 per cent higher, and members have better employer-provided health insurance and pension benefits, than non-unionised workers. Black, Latino and women workers are paid 26 per cent, 39.2 per cent and 23.8 per cent more, respectively, when they belong to a union.
While there was no general strike on No Kings Day, there were scores of strikes that demonstrated the power of unions. Essential Workers for Democracy (EWD) wrote in their rank-and-file newsletter: “A strike is our most powerful weapon,” and “If we strike together, we win together.”
