Is Kissing Trump's Ass, Real Nice and Slow How He Likes It, a Good Strategy?
A case study from organized labor.
When faced with a deranged, unrestrained, dictatorial right wing leader, institutions that want to survive have two basic options. The first is to resist with all of their power, trying to fight to defeat the threat to the principles that have allowed them, and their societies, to flourish. The second is to say: “Hey, if we flatter this guy, and get on his good side, maybe he’ll leave us alone—or even allow us to prosper, as he attacks our peers who are on his bad side.”
Which of these two paths are wiser, in the era of Donald Trump?
This year has already given us many examples of all sorts of institutions—businesses, law firms, universities, courts—trying to navigate Trump’s wrath by choosing one option or the other. Today, I want to focus on the world of organized labor. Modern history shows us that aspiring authoritarians on both the left and the right have always taken care to neuter the independent power of organized labor as they try to consolidate power for themselves. This is common sense. Any powerful, well-developed labor movement is a grassroots army that can be mobilized in opposition to the will of a dictatorship. Eroding democracy, the rule of law, the separation of powers, free elections—all of these tasks require, first, weakening any form of organized popular opposition. Labor movements are always an obvious potential source of pushback. The same thing is true in America (as I have argued at length). Even though American unions have not really covered themselves in glory thus far in terms of strong, united, effective opposition to the Trump administration, they still have the potential to do so. And unions will be increasingly forced to pick a side as the administration’s actions grow more hostile.
Every union was thinking about this as Trump came into office. Consider the North American Building Trades Unions (NABTU), a coalition of more than a dozen unions representing three million unionized construction workers in the US and Canada. In February, NABTU Government Affairs Director Jim Brewer sent a memo to NABTU President Sean McGarvey outlining the group’s government relations strategy in the first 30 days of the Trump administration. The memo listed dozens of major government-funded infrastructure projects that the group expected Trump to slash funding for. It noted that Trump had already decided not to use project labor agreements, which protect union workers and wages, on many government construction projects. In other words, it was already abundantly clear that the Trump administration would be rolling back huge parts of the Biden administration’s actions that benefited construction workers and their unions.
Then, in a section titled “ESTABLISHING A WORKING RELATIONSHIP,” the memo laid out the approach that NABTU planned to take to get on Trump’s good side. It noted that NABTU had released congratulatory statements on Trump’s inauguration, supported various Trump cabinet nominees, and also strategically “Remained silent” in the face of a number of assaults on union rights generally and NABTU’s priorities specifically.
So NABTU deliberately chose to lick Trump’s feet and kiss his ass as much as possible, as a way to establish a good relationship, reasoning that that would be the best way to protect NABTU’s own interests.
How’s that working out? Not well! Since that memo, the Trump administration has continued to carry out the most drastic assaults on union rights of any president since WW2. It has gotten so bad that just this week, NABTU President Sean McGarvey decided to… double down on kissing Trump’s ass. Perhaps he just wasn’t using enough tongue?
In a statement released Wednesday, McGarvey decided to lean in even further. “Mr. President, we need your help. You’re a builder. You’ve forgotten more about what it takes to develop and build a project than practically anybody in the world ever knew,” the statement began. “You are working hard, attempting to make deals and bring jobs back. But right now, some people around you are canceling job-creating projects — and with them, thousands and thousands of good-paying, blue-collar construction jobs.”
The statement goes on to list various major construction projects that have been defunded by McGarvey’s best friend, Donald Trump. Then, in one final effort to buddy up to the big guy, McGarvey says: “Labor and immigration rights are being violated daily at the Arizona TSMC project, which ICE should investigate and send buses immediately.”
Here we have the leader of a labor union coalition—which represents countless thousands of immigrant construction workers—begging the Trump administration to send his private ICE army to deport immigrant workers. Would you like to know what makes this even more sickening? Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant who became a national symbol of the Trump administration’s inhumanity when he was illegally deported to an El Salvadoran prison in March, was an apprentice member of the union SMART—a union that is a member of NABTU. So even after SMART issued statements and held rallies and agitated to get Abrego Garcia released, which the Trump administration fought with great disregard for common decency, the leader of the union coalition representing SMART still thought it would be a clever idea to beg for ICE enforcement on construction sites, because that would make him appear to be a good pal of Mr. President, a real builder, and—may I say, sir—an attractive and estimable man.
I believe in the principle of union democracy, and I am not a member of any construction union. So if I were to call Sean McGarvey a sellout to the cause of labor and a man who will go down in history as a Vichy-esque potato-headed fool, that does not mean much. Construction workers are free to choose who speaks for them. (Neither SMART nor NABTU responded to my request for comment.) I will say, however, that as a member of the labor movement and as an American who would not prefer to live in a fascist society, this sort of exaggerated appeasement of the Trump administration is not just immoral, demeaning, and repulsive. It is also ineffective.
Unions—just like law firms, and universities, and all the rest of civil society—need to look at what is happening right now with clear eyes, and learn their lesson. Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters, decided to speak at the Republican National Convention and flatter Trump there, despite the fact that Joe Biden had bailed out the pension plan of 620,000 Teamsters to the tune of $36 billion. O’Brien went on to play footsie with Trump and spend a lot of time talking to right wingers on podcasts and generally become America’s most conspicuous Not Hostile to Trump union leader. For all of this flattery, O’Brien won… what? A Labor Secretary who was supposed to be “union friendly,” but who has, in fact, spent her time killing off worker protection rules as fast as possible while talking about how fantastic President Trump is. And a gutted NLRB that will make it a million times harder for the Amazon Labor Union—Teamster members—to extract a contract from Amazon, which is now free of all government pressure.
Great stuff. Big win. Well worth the abject humiliation that will taint you for years to come.
This approach does not work. It does not help the working class. It does not serve the cause of civil society. It ends up making us weaker. And it serves to make the strongman leader stronger. It is exactly what he wants: to trick all potential opposition forces to lay down and beg for favors, rather than standing up and fighting. That’s how leaders like Donald Trump cement their power. The worst thing that organized labor can do is to fall into this trap. Even if someone thought, in good faith, that this might be the best strategy, we now have more than enough evidence to declare that it is not. At this point, anyone continuing to operate like this is either an enemy, or an idiot.
It’s hard to fight well when you’re on your knees. Stand up.
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Related reading: How a Strongman Gets Stronger; They Are Going to Take Everything If We Don’t Stop Them; Not Just Unions; Strike-Ready Unions. For more on the struggle within the building trades unions, here is an excellent Labor Notes story from this week. And here is a recent speech by Max Alvarez about the big picture importance of what the labor movement faces today.
Here is where I usually tell you, hey, if you’re interested in all of this, you would probably enjoy my book about the labor movement, “The Hammer.” True enough. I also feel compelled to shout out a couple of charities working in Gaza today, given the hellacious campaign of starvation and suffering that is being inflicted upon the people there. A couple of groups feeding Gazans that I have heard about are the Gaza Soup Kitchen, and World Central Kitchen. If you know other effective Gaza charities, feel free to drop them in the comment section below.
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If left leaning Americans are going to demonstrate any tangible instinct for self preservation, it’s going to have to start with bringing the same hostility they have for trump et.al to the folks who speak for them while shoving the knife in.
There’s a reason Dante put the betrayer in the deepest circle of hell. Unless people learn to hate the Democratic neoliberal consensus at least as much as Trump, we’re all going to be under right wing dystopia watch indefinitely.
Watching union leaders crawl for Trump is beyond embarrassing. Solidarity means taking risks for working people, not groveling for scraps from power. There’s no strategy here, only cowardice and betrayal. The people doing the real work deserve better than this.