The MeidasTouch Podcast - AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler on Fighting Back Against Trump's Attacks On Workers

Episode Date: April 5, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Trump voters who want their vote back. Meiselas interviews AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and Meiselas plays a clip from the latest video release by a More Perfect Union. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. We are hearing a lot of stories like this and credit to More Perfect Union for capturing this one of these Trump voters who are

either deeply regretting the vote that they made now that they're seeing their union rights absolutely gutted or just feeling very concerned and alarmed right now and really don't know what to do, feeling betrayed and confused. I just want to share this with you. Go watch the full video and more perfect union release because I think they highlight this issue about the Trump regime tearing up the union contract covering 47,000 TSA workers. But that's a story that the Trump regime has repeated writ large across federal unions, generally invoking national defense and other warlike powers to union bust, gut unions. Here, listen to this story. It's an interesting one. And then we're going to bring in a special guest. I'm not going to lie. I like some of Trump's policies, and that's the reason why I voted for him. But did I know it was going to threaten

America, the America that I keep safe every day? Bobby, a former Marine, has worked as a TSA baggage officer at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport for nearly 15 years. I've seen everything in a bag from dead gerbils in a bag to a kitchen sink. You name it, I've seen it. I've opened a bag where it was a garbage bag and it was meat full of maggots. As a passenger, you want those maggots getting loose under the plane and getting into your bag? What I like about my job is I protect America. You know, I love protecting America. I love the people that I interact with, you know, because I'm a people person.

People think it's a benign job, but it's an important job. If I have any suspicion at all, I check that bag because lives are at stake. It's not just a bag. That bag represents a life. What this current administration has done, and they literally took away our bargaining rights. We signed a seven-year contract in good faith. They think the union's a bad thing. We're not telling them how to do their job. We're just making our life more comfortable. And they can concentrate on the security of people. It's a tragic story. And it's a story that's being repeated.

Millions of Americans, union members are feeling that. Workers across the country are feeling that. Watch the full video, by the way, by More Perfect Union. They did a really great job there. Let's bring in Liz Shuler, president of AFL-CIO. I'm sure you're hearing these stories a lot as well. The AFL-CIO has 15 million members, 63 different unions. You're standing up and defending all these federal workers and litigation just generally. Liz, what are you hearing out there right now? Well, that story was so familiar and I'm glad you captured it and started

with that because that's what this is about you know these people aren't just numbers on a spreadsheet they're human beings they're the ones who keep our food safe our water clean and you know care for our veterans when they come home and and keep our airplanes safe in the sky. So I think it just defies common sense what's going on. So what I hear from workers is grave concern, the uncertainty they're feeling, the dehumanizing nature of what's going on

where you work hard and serve the people in the jobs that you do and then are just basically cast aside like you're trash. So it's horrible. Yeah, you know, that's part of it too. I mean, the unjustified terminations. But then one of the things that I talk about a lot, it's like defamation too, because the people are being told that it's for performance reasons when it's not, and they're being lied to and it, and it takes the person's, rips the people's soul, right? I mean, it's soul crushing. It's about dignity. I mean, all work has dignity and most of the work that's

being done in the federal government is about services that we rely on that often are unseen that we take for granted until we don't have them right so i think that we're going to start seeing the impacts of these cuts because it's really not six degrees of separation it's two right we all know someone or live uh next to someone in our neighborhood or um you know depend on uh the services like i said our our food safety, who would have thought we'd have to worry about that, right? So I think that's what we're talking about is humanizing what is happening out there. Let's take a look at the approach by the AFL-CIO. There has been a lot of lawsuits captioned AFL-CIO versus the various departments and

administrations. You didn't hesitate to defend the union members, the various unions right away. Can you talk a little bit through the litigations at a high level that are taking place and the strategy to aggressively litigate? You weren't afraid. You didn't say, oh, well, then they may retaliate. You weren't afraid. You didn't say, oh, well, and they may retaliate. You're like, they're already going after. You know, and there was no hesitation with the AFL-CIO.

That's what I appreciated right away from the jump. Talk to us about that. Yeah, thanks for that. And of course, we're a federation, as you said, an umbrella of 63 different unions, many of which are the federal unions representing workers like the American Federation of Government Employees, you know, the Professional and Technical Engineers Union, the National Federation of Federal Employees. So the AFL-CIO is a lead plaintiff in some lawsuits and a party to many others.

And then certainly our unions themselves are filing these lawsuits because of the direct impacts. But the one that really started for us was the probationary workers that were fired. And we filed that day, I think, or the next morning to say, this is an illegal action, we're not gonna let you get away with it and that lawsuit prevailed so we were happy when they restored the jobs of these probationary workers who as you know many probationary workers are people who have worked in the federal government for some time may have switched jobs and on our probationary period and others who are new to the federal government but as you said at the top,

most of the firings that took place were unjust and without cause. And these were people who were performing and doing well in their jobs. The other lawsuit that I wanted to call attention to was the lawsuit when Doge, the, quote, Department of Government Efficiency decided they were going to go into the Department of Labor. And that day, we stood up an emergency rally out in front and tried to essentially block him from entering. And, of course, they converted it to a virtual meeting. But they were going to be accessing private data of workers who were whistleblowers, for example, who would be working in an unsafe environment and raise their hand to say,

wait a second, this is wrong, became a whistleblower, which is a confidential process. That's the kind of data we're talking about, right? So we filed a lawsuit there as well to put up some guardrails to say, we need transparency. You don't get to just go in and access people's data with these you know 20-something silicon valley tech people this is highly sensitive and security

related data and so we also were able to prevail in that lawsuit so we have here we're happy for that and also not to mention the nlrB lawsuit where the National Labor Relations Board, which is the traffic cop for, you know, people who are courageously standing up to form unions and are often fired. Well, the chair of the NLRB was fired illegally as well. And so we filed the suit right away to get her reinstated. Yeah, I mean, those are all big cases with massive implications. And we could probably spend an hour if we wanted covering each, although the good news is, is we have a show, Legal AF, where we do cover all of those lawsuits

that you brought. But I want to just even talk about this. These are the types of headlines we see on a daily basis, like on Friday, RFK Jr. says 20% of Doge's health agency job cuts were, quote, mistakes. Around a fifth of the 10,000 jobs cut from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services were done in error and need to be corrected. I mean, you're talking about 10,000 people losing their jobs and they're saying now, these are human beings who have given their life to work jobs, who just want fair pay and to be treated with dignity. And then it's like, oopsies? Oopsies? Have you ever seen, you've been leading this union and you've been in the labor movement for a while. Have you ever seen anything like this? I've never seen anything like it. It is absolutely appalling and offensive to think about what the

carelessness with which they're approaching this, because, you know, I think about, you know, what you were just saying about those workers at HHS. And, you know, these are the people we're relying on who are making sure that, you know, children are given the health care that they need. I mean, it is, these are the services that people rely on on a daily basis that are taken for granted. And our union workers who work inside those agencies have been able to have a voice and speak out when they see something go wrong and not have to fear being fired in the past because they had a union contract. And that's why this action of last Thursday was so, so offensive where President Trump basically with the stroke of a pen took away the collective bargaining agreements of 700,000 union workers.

And the TSA worker at the beginning referenced this. TSA was separate and a precursor to that. But then they just went whole hog across the entire government and just basically cancelled legally binding collective bargaining agreements that were negotiated in good faith and to cancel it someone's rights like that it's a slippery slope and for those out there listening who say oh wow you know it sucks to be a federal worker they They're coming after you next. This is essentially a beta test for how far they can go. Next, we'll be, you know, rippling out

over the public sector at the state and local level and then on to the private sector. So the strategy is litigation. Strategy is rallying people publicly. The strategy is building coalitions with other unions. The strategy also that I'm seeing AFL-CIO promote, protests, peaceful protests out and about. I saw the post. We're covering this here all weekend, the April 5th hands-off protest. I saw a repost from AFL-CIO about that event right there. Can you talk to us about that mobilizing people to peacefully protest? And is that going to be part of a bigger strategy that you think may need to ramp up? Absolutely. And this is about escalation. We're starting with ladders of engagement. You know, we started in January

with, during congressional recesses, both February and March, it doubled every single month, actions all across this country to give people an outlet. You know, people are frustrated and they feel powerless. But we know in unions, that's what we do. You're not powerless if you come together. And like you said, we're coming together collectively in coalition with all kinds of partners and allies and ramping up activity, showing up outside of government buildings to say, look, these are the services we rely on. These are the people who deliver them. We actually launched what we call the Department of People Who Work for a Living. We said if Elon Musk can stand up his own fake department of, quote, government efficiency, we can have our department of people who work for a living because we're the ones on the

front lines who know the insides of these agencies, the work that is being done, who best to talk to than the workers. So we have a platform that we're actually using to interpret what's going on because most people are working their day jobs. They hear a headline here or there, but they don't really understand what the impact is and how it affects them. So we're really hoping people will sign up as activists on the Department of People Who Work for a Living, because that's a place where we can both decode what's happening and capture the stories of the impacts. And we're asking people to upload their stories. When those stories get uploaded, they have a distribution hub here on the Midas Touch Network to our 5 million subscribers. You're always welcome here, Liz Shuler on the Midas Touch Network to our 5 million subscribers. You're always welcome here, Liz Shuler on the Midas.

We're so grateful for the work you're doing and the work the AFL-CIO does every single day. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ben. Appreciate you being such a great supporter and someone who's lifting up what's really going on out there. We appreciate you.

We appreciate all the workers out there. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 5 million subscribers.