September 2025 – During the 2024 presidential campaign in the USA, Russell Vought – now serving as Director of the Office of Management and Budget – boasted that he wanted to put federal workers “in trauma.” Project 2025 went even further, calling union representation among government employees “incompatible with democracy” and urging Congress to outlaw the right of federal workers to have a voice on the job.
Now, as president, Trump has moved aggressively to turn that agenda into reality. Beyond appointing Vought, he handed Elon Musk – now the world’s richest man – unrestricted access to federal data and systems, while a cadre of inexperienced loyalists dismantled essential government operations and targeted the workers who kept them running, seemingly with cruelty as the guiding principle.
Nine months into Trump’s second term, one in eight federal employees – around 300,000 people – have been forced out of their jobs, marking the largest one-year workforce reduction since World War II. In March, his administration stripped nearly a million federal workers of collective bargaining rights in what amounts to the most sweeping act of union-busting in U.S. history. Then, just before Labor Day, more workers were added to that list. Nearly 450,000 employees across the Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs, along with the Environmental Protection Agency, have had their union contracts canceled outright.
These attacks on federal workers are not just an assault on their livelihoods or their unions – they weaken the very institutions that serve the public and, ultimately, harm us all.