Ryan Timlin is a steward in ATU Local 1005, and was president from 2017-2023.
Ian Rivero is a member of Amazon Teamsters at the Amazon KCVG Air Hub in Kentucky.
Billionaire-backed authoritarians like Trump only understand power. Right now, working-class people are showing him a glimpse of that power. Tens of thousands have fought back nationally against ICE raids and repression in Los Angeles. After a national day of action called by SEIU, one of the largest unions in the country, SEIU-USSW president David Huerta was released from custody after being arrested for standing up to ICE.
But Huerta is still facing bogus felony charges, and Trump has responded to the protests by mobilizing the National Guard and Marines to beat down on protesters and assist ICE in carrying out more raids. It’s a dangerous escalation designed to intimidate and repress the movement.
Meanwhile, Trump is trying to destroy our unions. His attacks on public education are aimed at undermining our teachers’ unions. He busted the union of over one million federal workers and won’t stop with the public sector. Trump hopes his trade war will make US corporations richer while workers face mass layoffs and inflation is on the rise. These attacks are an existential threat to the entire labor movement.
So far, the response of the majority of the leadership of the labor movement to Trump’s attacks has been completely insufficient. We can’t afford to bide our time waiting on court rulings or the midterm elections. The national day of action called by SEIU to end the raids and free David was an important step, but now we need to escalate. The labor movement needs to stand shoulder to shoulder with the courageous protesters fighting back against ICE and imbue the movement with power—the power of the working-class.
Trump wants a fight. It’s time for the labor movement to give him one.
Sign our petition now calling on our union leaders to step up and organize a one-day strike. Share it with every union member you know!
Working-Class Power
We are socialist union members who have experience fighting alongside our coworkers for issues that go beyond just the workplace. During the George Floyd uprising, we successfully pushed our Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 in Minneapolis to refuse to transport arrested protestors to jail on city buses. At Amazon’s largest air hub in Northern Kentucky, KCVG, we built a militant campaign with over 1,000 coworkers to win translation at work.
We need deportation defense committees in every workplace and organized, mass non-compliance with ICE. Hospitality unions can refuse to serve ICE agents and National Guard troops at their workplaces. Public transit workers can refuse to transport ICE agents and detained protesters like we did in Minneapolis during BLM. We’re the ones who run the schools, drive the buses, transport essential goods, keep hotels up and running and more; we need to make it clear we won’t lift a finger for Trump’s deportation machine.
“An injury to one is an injury to all” can’t just be a hollow slogan in our movement. If we give even an inch to the attempts to isolate our immigrant coworkers, Trump and the bosses will take a mile in undermining the unity of the labor movement. Any illusion that labor leaders can hide their heads in the sand and try to avoid confrontation with Trump in order to get a “seat at the table,” is a complete dead-end strategy.
It’s essential that we all go to the protests to show that our communities will stand together to fight Trump’s deportations. Showing up with coworkers and forming union contingents can be a powerful first step in getting our workplaces organized to fight Trump’s attacks. But as organized workers, we have an even greater power—the power to directly block Trump’s machine of repression and shut down the flow of profits by going on strike.
In few places is this more true than Los Angeles. More than one third of all shipping containers (full of billions of dollars of goods) pass through the Port of Long Beach—shutting it down would cost Trump’s corporate backers almost a billion dollars a day. LAX is a hub for Delta, American Airlines, and United—any disruption to its 1,500 flights a day has a ripple effect across the entire US economy. The only way to shut down ICE for good, and kick the National Guard and Marines off our streets, is to stop the flow of profits through our workplaces and neighborhoods, and be ready to do it again if they try and come back.
In fact, threatening the flow of profits is one of the only things that has gotten Trump to back down in the past. When Trump tried to implement the first “Muslim Ban” in 2017, a spontaneous taxi drivers’ strike and airport occupations forced the courts to step in. In 2019 during Trump’s government shutdown over funding the border wall, TSA agent sick-outs and Association of Flight Attendants union president Sara Nelson calling for a general strike forced Trump’s hand and ended the shutdown. We need this and more to take on Trump 2.0.
The Time is Now
Going on strike takes serious preparation. There will need to be meetings in every union, workplace, and community across the country if we’re going to shut down Trump. We can start finding supportive coworkers by organizing union contingents at every major protest. Beyond our immediate demands of ending the raids, freeing the protesters, and kicking the National Guard and Marines off our streets, we need to put forward demands like free healthcare for all (including undocumented immigrants and trans people), a massive unionized green jobs program, fully funded public education, high quality affordable housing, and fully funded public transportation—all paid for by massively taxing the rich and slashing the soon-to-be $1 trillion US military budget.
SEIU-USWW, the union whose president David Huerta was arrested by ICE and now faces felony charges, could take the first step by naming a date for a one-day strike. This is not impossible—50,000 SEIU members in LA County just went on strike earlier this year. Other unions should take up the call and make plans of their own—the stakes are too high not to. It’s not just about one union president or even just about the millions of immigrant workers in the US—this is about the entire working class. If we don’t fight Trump head-on when some of us are under attack, who will be left to fight when he comes for the rest of us?
The future of the US labor movement comes down to moments like this one. Trump isn’t going to stop and he’s coming for our coworkers, our friends, our unions, and our basic rights. Whether we fight back and win the kind of world we need is up to us.
We are union members against ICE and we’re calling on the labor movement to organize a one-day strike in defense of our immigrant sisters and brothers and the right to protest. Sign our petition and join us!