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Trump Order Could Cripple Federal Worker Unions Fighting DOGE Cuts
The move added to the list of actions by President Trump that use the powers of his office to weaken perceived enemies.
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/us/politics/federal-worker-unions-doge.html
Dozens of members and supporters of the American Federation of Government Employees union rallied outside NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston last week.Credit…Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Rebecca Davis O’Brien.png
By Rebecca Davis O’Brien
March 29, 2025
Federal worker unions have sought over the past two months to lead the resistance to President Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency, filing lawsuits, organizing protests and signing up new members by the thousands.
This week, Mr. Trump struck back with a potentially crippling blow.
In a sweeping executive order denouncing the unions as “hostile” to his agenda, the president cited national security concerns to remove some one million civil servants across more than a dozen agencies from the reach of organized labor, eliminating the unions’ power to represent those workers at the bargaining table or in court.
A lawsuit accompanying the executive order, filed by the administration in federal court in Texas, asks a judge to give the president permission to rescind collective bargaining agreements, citing national security interests and saying the agreements had “hamstrung” executive authority.
Labor leaders vowed on Friday to challenge the Trump actions in court. But, barring a legal intervention, the moves could kneecap federal unions and protections for many civil service employees just as workers brace for a new round of job cuts across the government.
“They are hobbling the union, ripping up collective bargaining agreements, and then they will come for the workers,” said Brian Kelly, a Michigan-based employee of the Environmental Protection Agency who heads a local of the American Federation of Government Employees, the country’s largest federal employee union. “So, it’s a worst-case scenario.”
The move added to the list of actions by Mr. Trump to use the levers of the presidency to weaken perceived enemies, in this case seeking to neutralize groups that represent civil servants who make up the “deep state” he is trying to dismantle. In issuing the order, Mr. Trump said he was using congressionally granted powers to designate certain sectors of the federal work force central to “national security missions,” and exempt from collective-bargaining requirements. Employees of some agencies, like the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., are already excluded from collective bargaining for these reasons.
But, with his order, Mr. Trump added exemptions for many workers in the Veterans Affairs, Treasury and Energy Departments as well as the E.P.A., among others. Huge portions of the Department of Health and Human Services were also designated as vital to national security, in addition to “most components” of the Justice Department.
The order was clear in its purpose: to neutralize groups that have been able “to obstruct agency management.”
“The goal is to stop employees in certain security-related agencies from unionizing in ways that disrupt the president’s agenda,” said Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman.
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Since Mr. Trump returned to office in January and began imposing large-scale reductions in the government work force, federal employee unions, and particularly A.F.G.E., have taken on new visibility and a central role in challenging the Trump administration. The unions have scored some successes in court challenging cuts related to the efforts of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Labor leaders have emerged as vocal champions for federal workers — and sharp critics of Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk.
A town hall outside Indianapolis turned angry when a Republican congresswoman defended DOGE cuts.
The Taliban released a detained American woman days after the U.S. lifted bounties on three Taliban leaders.
White House Correspondents’ Association cancels comedian booked for annual dinner.
A.F.G.E. has seen a surge of tens of thousands of new dues-paying members since January, union officials said.
Samuel R. Bagenstos, a University of Michigan law professor and former general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services, said the executive order would be vulnerable to “very significant” legal challenges, calling it “a dramatic overreach of the president’s authority” under laws governing the federal work force. The effort to justify the move under rules for national security employees is a stretch, Mr. Bagenstos said.
“Here we have this incredibly broad effort to take away the power of any union to represent any employee,” Mr. Bagenstos said.
Union officials said on Friday they feared the president’s actions could be catastrophic for their organizations on multiple fronts.
They said the cancellation of collective bargaining agreements for many workers would have the immediate effect of ending collection of dues from those workers’ paychecks.
Leaders at A.F.G.E. estimated that 75 percent of their 300,000 dues-paying members use paycheck deductions. Now, the union will have to convince members to make direct payments online to the union, they said.
What’s more, union leaders said, the president’s actions could deal a lethal blow to their most potent weapon so far against the Trump administration and its DOGE-led cuts, the federal court system.
In the absence of a collective bargaining agreement, the unions would no longer be the representative of workers, which means a judge might find they no longer have legal standing to sue on their behalf, union leaders and lawyers said. Mr. Fields, the White House spokesman, said as much on Friday: “Because of this litigation, unions impacted by the executive order would no longer be able to represent agency employees.”
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, at a news conference outside the Capitol on Friday. He called President Trump’s executive order “plainly retaliatory.”Credit…Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Unions said they would fight back. Speaking on Friday at a news conference on Capitol Hill, the president of A.F.G.E., Everett Kelley, called the executive order “plainly retaliatory,” and said: “The labor movement will not be silenced.” Randy Erwin, the national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees — another union affected by the order — called it “the biggest assault on collective bargaining rights that we have ever seen in this country,” and called it “blatantly illegal and unconstitutional.”
A.F.G.E.’s leadership held an emergency meeting late Thursday to discuss the order. While the union’s leadership has braced for major assaults on the work force, some leaders did not see such a dramatic move coming, according to one person involved in the discussion.
Other union officials have described preparing for such a moment, given Mr. Trump’s efforts during his first administration to diminish the power of federal unions and to remove protections on civil service jobs.
Federal law imposes restrictions on federal employees. Union membership cannot be mandated, for one, and federal employees cannot strike.
Technically, A.F.G.E. represents 800,000 workers, but the majority of them do not pay dues. In the frenzy of new sign-ups and newly engaged members, union leaders said in interviews that they were often explaining to workers what exactly a union can do for them. Some workers have been frustrated by the limitations of the unions’ power.
The way forward, said Mr. Kelly, the A.F.G.E. local leader from Michigan, was clear: The union had to make its case known not only to federal workers but to Americans. “You are going to have no voice in your workplace. You need people to really see how dangerous this is.”
Tyler Pager contributed reporting.
Rebecca Davis O’Brien covers labor and the work force for The Times. More about Rebecca Davis O’Brien
Trump Order Could Cripple Federal Worker Unions Fighting DOGE Cuts
www.nytimes.com
The move added to the list of actions by President Trump that use the powers of his office to weaken perceived enemies.
UAW leader Shawn Fain walks a tightrope between tariff praise and Trump criticism
www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/29/uaw-trump-tariffs-shawn-fain/
For UAW President Shawn Fain, finding common ground on trade with the president brings risks as the administration pursues policies that could weaken organized labor.
March 29, 2025 at 8:10 a.m. EDTToday at 8:10 a.m. EDT
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain speaks during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last year. (Joe Lamberti/For The Washington Post)
By Lauren Kaori Gurley
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain earned a reputation as one of Donald’s Trump most ruthless critics during last year’s presidential race. Now Fain, the powerful union leader, is seeking to make inroads with the Trump administration on tariffs that could boost the autoworkers’ union.
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The UAW lauded the Trump administration in a statement this weekafter the White House announced sweeping tariffs Wednesday on automobiles and auto parts, with the union declaring the move a “victory” and a “major step in the right direction for autoworkers and blue-collar communities.”
But for Fain, who rose to national prominence during a historic strikeagainst the Big Three automakers in 2023, finding common ground on trade policy with the president brings risks as the Trump administration pursues policies that could weaken the labor movement.
The UAW represents some 400,000 workers and stands to benefit from the tariffs, which proponents characterize as a way to restore some of the U.S. jobs shed by the auto industry. Big Three automakers have closed or spun off 65 U.S. plants over the past two decades, and many U.S. auto plants are currently running under capacity, according to the UAW, which blames free trade agreements for the loss of auto industry jobs. At its peak in the 1970s, the union represented some 1.5 million members.
Although car companies and other tariff opponents say the newly announced 25 percent duties on imported vehicles and parts could eventually reduce jobs because of lower demand, some economists say they are likely to boost U.S. employment.
“I would tend to agree with the UAW’s assessment. … That the tariffs are likely to influence manufacturers to put more of their production capability in the U.S.,” said Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Cox Automotive. “That would lead to more employment.”
The union maintained in its comments about the tariffs that the Trump administration must expand union rights, protect Social Security benefits and provide guaranteed health care, such as Medicare and Medicaid, to all workers.
“The big risk for Fain is in getting a short- or medium-term boost in saving some jobs in the U.S., he is offering Trump political support,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “That fissures the anti-Trump coalition and gives support to an anti-labor, authoritarian regime.”
In issuing directives to end the Biden-era support of electric-vehicle production, Trump could also imperil the UAW’s strategy of rebuilding its membership by organizing new EV battery plants. Meanwhile, this week Trump nominated a lawyer from a prominent firm known for fighting unions to be general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union organizing.
Even as Fain seeks inroads with Trump on trade policy aimed at restoring U.S. manufacturing jobs, he has continued to criticize the administration on other issues impacting UAW members.
Fain has rebuked the Trump administration in recent weeks over policies that affect UAW members in higher education, including cuts to federal research funds, the detention and deportation of students, and crackdowns on free speech on campuses. The union represents some 100,000 members in higher education, including graduate students in the University of California system — membership gains from recent decades that have partially offset losses in the auto-manufacturing sector.
Fain on Friday railed against Trump’s executive order abolishing union rights for hundreds of thousands of federal workers, calling it “an attack on free speech, on workers’ right to organize, on the very idea that people should have a say in their own jobs and futures.”
With the next UAW leadership election coming in 2026, Fain also faces his own uncertain future as union president after unseating the incumbent as an outsider in a razor-thin race in 2023. The UAW’s members, who range from Columbia University graduate students to autoworkers in rural Indiana, represent a wide spectrum of political views, and many Trump supporters in the union have criticized the organization’s endorsements last year of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
In the months leading up to the presidential election, Fain repeatedly excoriated Trump in TV interviews, public speeches and statements, calling Trump a “job killer,” and saying that he “stands against everything our union stands for.”
Trump levied his own set of attacks against Fain, saying during his Republican National Convention address that Fain “should be fired immediately.”
The UAW in August filed federal labor charges against Trump for statements he and billionaire Elon Musk made about firing striking workers. During his prime-time address at the Democratic National Convention, Fain unveiled a T-shirt shirt under his blazer that read “Trump is a scab.”
But Fain took a conciliatory tone after the November election, declaring in a Jan. 19 op-ed in The Washington Post: “We’re ready to work with Trump,” adding that the union hoped to “find common ground with the president on trade policy.”
In statements Wednesday touting the tariffs, the UAW said it would “work with any politician, regardless of party, who is willing to reverse decades of working-class people going backwards in the most profitable times in our nation’s history.”
The union also called for the immediate renegotiation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, an increase in American-made auto parts, and a North American minimum wage that raises pay and benefits for Mexican autoworkers.
UAW leader walks a tightrope between tariff praise and Trump criticism
www.washingtonpost.com
For UAW President Shawn Fain, finding common ground on trade with the president brings risks as the administration pursues policies that could weaken organized labor.
Why Won’t the US’s Largest Labor Federation Talk About a General Strike?
jacobin.com/2020/09/general-strike-afl-cio
BY JEFF SCHUHRKE
The barriers to organizing a general strike in the United States in response to the myriad miseries American workers are facing are massive. But we can’t move toward such a strike without at least putting the possibility on the table and discussing it — something the AFL-CIO has shown no interest in doing.
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AFL-CIO Headquarters, Washington, DC. (Matt Popovich / Flickr)
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Every so often over the past few years, the hashtag #GeneralStrike goes viral, with everyone from obscure Twitter users to celebrities like Cher and Britney Spearscalling for a nationwide work stoppage to demand systemic change. It’s much easier to get a hashtag to take off than to actually pull off a general strike, of course. But since the pandemic began, calls for a general strike have become louder and more frequent, with even the New York Times getting on board.
US union density is at its lowest point in a century, and workers’ power is incredibly low. Still, the number of US workers going on strike is at a thirty-year high. Workers like teachers have pulled off successful work stoppages in the last few years, and the pandemic has shown that strikes or strike threats can be essential tools for defending workers’ health and safety. Such successes have no doubt helped grow the popularity of the idea that the most powerful and effective way workers can fight back against the domination of capital and the willful indifference of neoliberal institutions is by collectively withholding our labor.
It seems like everyone is talking about a general strike these days. Everyone, that is, except the one organization best positioned to not just raise the issue of a general strike, but to go beyond mere talk to actually organize one: the AFL-CIO.
Representing 12.5 million workers from fifty-five affiliated unions linked together not only through the national federation, but also through a robust network of statewide federations and local labor councils all over the country, the AFL-CIO is the single largest workers’ organization in the United States. If any entity has the requisite infrastructure and relationships in place to realize a national, cross-industry strike, it is the AFL-CIO.
While often talked about in the United States as though it were a utopian fantasy, the general strike is a weapon used fairly frequently by workers in other parts of the world. Countries as varied as Brazil, France, South Africa, India, and South Korea, among others, have seen general strikes in recent years, with hundreds of thousands — sometimes millions — of workers walking off the job to protest their respective government’s social and economic policies. These strikes typically last a day or two, but sometimes stretch on for weeks or even months.
Almost always, these enormous, politically inspired, multi-industry work stoppages occur because they are prompted by national unions and labor federations. High-ranking labor officials in many other countries — countries that often differ from one another in terms of laws, politics, and cultures — use the machinery of the organizations they lead to agitate and organize working people into participating in general strikes.
In the United States, despite numerous injustices plaguing the working class, national labor leaders are not at all inclined to use the resources at their disposal to encourage general strikes (with one important exception I’ll get to momentarily). Because of restrictive labor laws, no-strike clauses in union contracts, complex inter-union politics, and a culture that often avoids bold action at all costs, they tend to consider the idea of a general strike to be too risky, too radical, perhaps even ridiculous.
Lacking militant leadership from those who ostensibly speak on behalf of the country’s working class and who are in a position to actually help make a general strike happen, it’s no wonder that it falls to regular folks on social media to sporadically issue the call for a #GeneralStrike.
Whenever these calls crop up, it’s not uncommon to see some labor movement veterans respond with thinly veiled exasperation and condescension. They explain that strikes require actual organizing — not mere hashtags — and how organizing requires time, strategy, and skill. Obviously, they’re absolutely right. Any kind of job action takes organizing, and it’s vital to remind people of the necessity of a long-term commitment to organizing, especially in a society notorious for seeking shortcuts and instant gratification.
But perhaps instead of simply rolling their eyes at the well-meaning people who dare to advocate a general strike without having ever organized, dedicated unionists could make it more of a habit to chide national labor officials who should know all about organizing yet never so much as utter the words “general strike” except when they’re talking about history or foreign unions.
Labor specialists and laypeople alike have become so accustomed to AFL-CIO leaders erring on the side of extreme caution that they often overlook how the federation is uniquely positioned to coordinate a nationwide work stoppage — particularly by using the existing infrastructure and relationships within and between national and local unions, statewide federations, and local labor councils to do the kind of organizing that would be necessary to execute a general strike. As a result, the question of holding high-level labor officials accountable for failing to lead the way rarely comes up in the many lively discussions on how to rejuvenate the labor movement and build working-class power, including discussions on how to organize a general strike. Those with the most influence and power in the labor movement get a pass, while the inability to grow the movement and take militant collective action on a mass scale is attributed either to rank-and-file workers not organizing vigorously and skillfully enough, or the serious structural barriers that worker organizing in the United States faces — something that must be central to any discussion of labor’s predicament, but far from the whole story.
Of course, the notable exception to the lack of interest in general strikes among national labor leaders that I alluded to earlier is Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants and a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council. In early 2019, Nelson famously urged fellow union leaders to begin making preparations for a general strike to put an end to Trump’s devastating federal shutdown. Hours later, the shutdown ended. Not coincidentally, immediately after this episode, Nelson became one of the most popular and well-known labor leaders in the country, as well as a much-rumored contender for the AFL-CIO presidency.
Similar to the Bernie Sanders phenomenon, Nelson’s rise to national prominence demonstrates how at least a significant part of the US working class is clamoring for bold, militant, progressive champions willing to use whatever leverage they have to spur mass collective action to bring about real change. Unlike so many other high-level labor officials who ignore the repeated and justified popular calls for a nationwide work stoppage, she has used her position to uplift and try to realize those calls.
Pulling off a general strike in a traditionally anti-union country like the United States is no easy task, to say the least, but with more labor leaders in the mold of Sara Nelson — particularly at the helm of a national workers’ organization that already has the capacity to organize mass strike action across industries and communities, but lacks the will — it would be more doable.
CONTRIBUTORS
Jeff Schuhrke is a labor historian who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a member of UIC United Faculty, AFT Local 6456, and a former member of the UIC Graduate Employees Organization, AFT Local 6297.
Why Won’t the US’s Largest Labor Federation Talk About a General Strike?
jacobin.com
The barriers to organizing a general strike in the United States in response to the myriad miseries American workers are facing are massive. But we can’t move toward such a strike without at least p…
Elon Musk, once a tacit backer of DEI, now focuses on anti-White bias
Elon Musk, who was raised during South African apartheid, used to steer clear of debate about race. Now, he frequently advocates for White people.
Nathan Murthy worked as an engineer for Tesla from 2014 until he was fired in 2020 after leading a racial justice protest in the factory. (Christie Hemm Klok/For The Washington Post)
“A lot of us were fed up and let down and felt betrayed by all of our leaders,” Murthy said. He was fired a few days later for “intentionally sabotaging” the assembly line, according to documents Murthy provided to The Post. Tesla did not respond to questions about Murthy’s firing.
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/20/elon-musk-race-dei-doge/
March 20, 2025 at 8:00 a.m. EDTToday at 8:00 a.m. EDT
Elon Musk speaks to reporters in the White House Oval Office in February. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
By Beth Reinhard, Faiz Siddiqui and Clara Ence Morse
In the spring of 2017, two months after a Black employee sued Tesla and alleged that co-workers frequently called him the n-word with impunity, chief executive Elon Musk sent out a companywide email with the subject line “Doing the right thing.”
The note marked one of the first times that the billionaire tech icon, born and raised in privilege during South African apartheid, engaged in a public conversation about race. Avoid making offensive comments, Musk said — but don’t be overly sensitive.
“Part of not being a huge jerk is considering how someone might feel who is part of an historically less represented group,” Musk wrote to thousands of employees, in a message later included in court filings in another lawsuit. But Musk added: “In fairness, if someone is a jerk to you, but sincerely apologizes, it is important to be thick-skinned and accept that apology.”
Over the next eight years, as he became the richest man in the world, Musk shifted from a Democratic-leaning critic of Donald Trump to a Republican-friendly Trump acolyte. He emerged as a hero on the far right who frequently comments on racial issues — and who wields extraordinary power overseeing the president’s cost-cutting operation, known as the U.S. DOGE Service. Musk’s operatives at DOGE — which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, though it is not a Cabinet-level agency — have taken root in offices across the federal bureaucracy, sweeping up reams of potentially sensitive data and demanding drastic cuts to programs and personnel.
An early target was the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at all federal agencies. While opposition to DEI programs has become a mainstream Republican position, Musk has articulated more radical views on race in interviews and posts on X, his social media platform.
He has warned that lower birth rates and immigration are diluting American culture and the cultures of other majority-White and Asian countries. “We should be very cautious about having some sort of global mixing pot,” he said earlier this year. He has called unchecked illegal immigration “civilizational suicide” and “an invasion,” though he himself was working illegally, in violation of his visa, after he deferred his enrollment in a Stanford University graduate program to launch his career in the United States in the 1990s. He also warns that declining birth rates are leading to “population collapse,” and, having fathered over a dozen children, stresses the importance of “smart people” having more kids.
Now, civil rights activists and government watchdogs are concerned that Musk is bringing these views on race and immigration to bear as he and his DOGE staffers scrutinize all corners of the government and execute major public policy changes. Having dispatched with DEI programs, Musk’s team is starting to purge those tasked with protecting employees’ civil rights and investigating discrimination claims.
Earlier this year, Trump seized on Musk’s long-standing claim that DEI efforts have made air travel less safe. He and Musk contended, without evidence, that DEI contributed to the fatal collision in Washington of a U.S. Army helicopter and a passenger plane. “DEI has caused people to DIE,” Musk wrote on X.
“As a spreader of hate and disinformation on his own platform, what pops into Mr. Musk’s head at 3 in the morning can be seen by millions of people,” said Imran Ahmed, founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks extremism and that X has unsuccessfully sued. “He is in a position of considerable political power, with the ability to withhold or increase government funding based on his whims.”
Musk’s comments circulate through a public address system unmatched in modern politics. With roughly 220 million followers, his X account is the platform’s most popular — with a reach that exceeds Trump’s — and it reflects a preoccupation with race, immigration and diversity. He posted about these topics an average of roughly four times a day in the four months leading up to Trump’s inauguration; about 10 percent of his posts were about those topics from the beginning of 2024 through the middle of this month, a sevenfold increase over 2021, according to a Washington Post review that used keywords to categorize them.
Musk frequently interacts with accounts that comment on racial issues and draw attention to crimes committed by Black people or immigrants. For example, Musk has interacted more than 60 times in the past year with an account named @iamyesyouareno that has about 471,000 followers. In response to a post that said, “White people aren’t allowed to have their own homelands,” Musk wrote, “I think it’s great that America is so diverse but this does seem asymmetric.” Musk also highlighted several posts that suggested non-White people “hate” White people by responding with exclamation marks or comments like “True.”
That’s a typical Musk tactic: amplifying a controversial opinion on a racially sensitive topic in a way certain to raise hackles on the left. “Something to think about,” Musk wrote recently in response to podcaster Ben Shapiro calling for Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd.
Musk did not respond to The Post’s request for an interview. He also did not respond to questions about the 2017 email to Tesla employees, nor did he address whether his views about race have changed. Tesla and X also did not respond to requests for comment.
In response to detailed questions about Musk, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt attacked The Post and said: “This story is literally just combing together random things from the internet to paint Elon Musk as a racist. Get a life.”
Musk, 53, has argued it is White people who are frequently the victims of discrimination because of what he views as left-wing overreach to correct perceived racial inequities and to silence right-wing commentary. “We need to be very cautious about anything that is anti-meritocratic, and anything that results in the suppression of free speech,” Musk said in a 2023 interview.
Musk frequently uses X to call attention to what he sees as anti-White racism. A Tucker Carlson podcast last year was billed on X with this takeaway: “There is systemic racism in the United States, against whites. Everyone knows it. Nobody says it. How come?” Musk reposted it, adding, “Concerning.”
Allies say Musk is simply embracing an open exchange of ideas in a way that liberals reject. Tech investor Bill Lee once observed on social media that “only a handful of [people] truly know him but so so so many haters.”
“This is a debate about speech the left doesn’t like, and speech they don’t like they deem racist,” said Tom Fitton, who leads the conservative group Judicial Watch. “Musk is helping increase the free speech rights of millions of citizens.”
But Musk’s views have increasingly attracted public scrutiny, including after he made a gesture during Trump’s inaugural festivities that critics said resembled a Nazi salute. Musk denounced that claim, then posted a message on X using Third Reich leaders’ names as puns. “Bet you did nazi that coming,” Musk wrote, leading Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt — who had previously defended the salute as “an awkward gesture” — to admonish: “The Holocaust is not a joke.”
The electric car company Musk leads faces several ongoing lawsuits alleging racial discrimination. Some complaints have been moved to private arbitration as part of the company’s efforts to keep disputes out of open court, including the case that was followed by his 2017 companywide email; that plaintiff lost. In one racial discrimination case against Tesla that went to trial, a jury awarded $3.2 million in 2023 to a Black elevator operator. In all of the cases, Tesla staunchly denies that Black employees were mistreated or retaliated against for reporting racist conduct.
Musk is not a defendant in these suits. But some former employees and their lawyers say his comments about racial sensitivities set a tone of intolerance. Nathan Murthy, a Black and Filipino former Tesla engineer fired in 2020 after leading a racial justice protest in a factory, recalled reading Musk’s “thick-skinned” email over and over again.
“It felt really dismissive when there was very obvious racial tension,” Murthy said. “Musk was essentially saying, ‘Shut up and go back to work.’”
Murthy added: “I’ve been trying to raise the alarm on Elon for years.”
‘I had a tough childhood’
Musk was raised in South Africa during the last chapters of apartheid in the 1970s and 1980s, a period he rarely discusses publicly. “I had a tough childhood,” he has said in multiple interviews. His parents divorced when he was 8, and he was bullied by classmates and verbally abused by his father, according to Musk biographies.
Still, Musk enjoyed the privileges that came with being White in Pretoria at a time when segregation was violently enforced on the impoverished Black majority.
“We grew up in a bubble of entitlement,” said Rudolph Pienaar, who graduated with Musk from Pretoria Boys High School in 1988 and now works in the U.S. as a biomedical scientist. “I am not sure if Elon can conceive of systematic discrimination and struggle because that’s not his experience. His life now in some ways is how it was under apartheid — rich and entitled with the entire society built to sustain him and his ilk.”
Pretoria Boys High was a socially progressive school that admitted a handful of Black students, but Pienaar and two other former classmates who said they were friendly with Musk said they could not recall him ever talking about politics.
In an email to The Post, his father, Errol, said Musk and his younger brother were “interested in motorbikes, computers, basketball and a little about girls. They were not into political nonsense, and we lived in a very well-run, law-abiding country with virtually no crime at all. Actually no crime. We had several black servants who were their friends.”
Errol added that Musk and his brother also had several Black friends.
Errol Musk, the father of Elon Musk, at his house in Langebaan, South Africa, in 2022. (Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images)
In a sign that the family disapproved of racial segregation, Musk and his brother attended an anti-apartheid concert, according to a biography by Walter Isaacson. Terence Beney, who knew Musk at Pretoria Boys High, remembered him attending a funeral for a Black friend who was killed in a car crash in 1987. Beney said that growing up in a country in which official censors would use nails to scratch banned records at radio stations helps explain why Musk cast himself as a “free speech absolutist” when he bought Twitter and reinstated social media accounts previously suspended for hate speech.
Musk’s father worked as an engineer and imported emeralds from an unregistered mine in Zambia, which “helped me and my two boys sustain ourselves during the collapse of Apartheid in SA,” he said in the email to The Post. Musk noted his father’s share in an emerald mine in a 2014 interview but wrote years later about “the fake emerald mine thing.” Errol told Isaacson about the mine: “If you registered it, you would wind up with nothing, because the Blacks would take everything from you.”
Errol also served on the Pretoria City Council after defeating an Afrikaner member of the pro-apartheid National Party in 1972. Musk’s mother, Maye, is a Canadian-born model. Her father, Joshua Haldeman, moved the family from Canada to South Africa during apartheid and embraced racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories, according to reporting by the Atlantic. He died when Musk was 2.
Musk, who left South Africa when he was 17, frequently says that slavery has been practiced all over the world for centuries by people of all races. “We are all descended from slaves,” he said in a podcast interview last year.
“Elon hasn’t been back much,” said Beney, who still lives in Pretoria. “I don’t think he considers himself South African at all. … The U.S. is home.”
Musk introduces the Tesla Model S in Hawthorne, California, in 2009. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
‘Phony social justice warriors’
By 2017, Musk was a monster Silicon Valley success story, worth an estimated $15 billion. He had led Tesla for nearly a decade and was hailed as an environmentally conscious innovator. Early in Trump’s first term, Musk criticized the president’s executive order banning travel from several majority-Muslim countries. He later resigned from an advisory board when Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement.
After the racial discrimination lawsuit was filed against Tesla that March, Musk sent the companywide email saying that on one hand, minorities “have endured difficulties that someone born or raised in a more privileged situation did not.” He added, “Don’t ever intentionally allow someone to feel excluded, uncomfortable or unfairly treated.”
On the other hand, Musk wrote, “Sometimes these things happen unintentionally, in which case you should apologize.” Lawsuits from people from underrepresented groups who claim they have not been promoted enough, he said, are “obviously not cool.”
But Tesla soon faced several other racial discrimination lawsuits from individuals as well as California and federal regulators, who alleged that in multiple instances, the n-word was used and swastikas and racial slurs were scrawled on bathroom walls and lunch tables. One ongoing suit — certified by a state judge as a class action representing thousands of Tesla employees — claimed, “In light of CEO Musk’s message to employees that racist epithets can be directed ‘unintentionally’ and that it is ‘important to be thick-skinned,’ it is not surprising that the Tesla Factory has become a hotbed for racist behavior.”
Tesla pushed back. A response titled “Hotbed of Misinformation” said Tesla investigates all complaints of discrimination or harassment and if they are proved to be true, the company takes immediate action. The company also said that Musk’s email was meant to ensure a collegial workplace and noted that in a company of 33,000 employees, “it is not humanly possible to stop all bad conduct, but we will do our best to make it is as close to zero as possible.” Later, in an interview, Musk personally vouched for the climate at Tesla’s factory in California, calling it “a very good atmosphere.”
In 2020, the violent deaths of Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement. Musk briefly commiserated, writing “#JusticeForGeorge” on social media and demanding criminal charges against Chauvin’s colleagues present during Floyd’s arrest. A top Black Tesla executive wrote about her sorrow and fear after Floyd’s death, later adding that Musk “told me that I had his full support.”
At the time, Tesla was publishing DEI reports that highlighted “unconscious bias trainings” and recruitment on historically Black college campuses. But Murthy, who had started working as a Tesla engineer a few years earlier, said he routinely heard about and experienced racially insensitive remarks, echoing a claim made in the racial discrimination lawsuits against the company. He helped organize a protest in September 2020 in which he said five employees on the assembly line stopped working and sat mostly in silence for about three hours to honor Taylor.
Nathan Murthy worked as an engineer for Tesla from 2014 until he was fired in 2020 after leading a racial justice protest in the factory. (Christie Hemm Klok/For The Washington Post)
“A lot of us were fed up and let down and felt betrayed by all of our leaders,” Murthy said. He was fired a few days later for “intentionally sabotaging” the assembly line, according to documents Murthy provided to The Post. Tesla did not respond to questions about Murthy’s firing.
By the time the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued Tesla in 2023, a prominent index of sustainability-focused public companies had ousted the company, citing, in part, the racial discrimination claims. Musk called the index a “scam” and questioned how ExxonMobil could get a higher rating than Tesla. The index, he said, “has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”
By the following year, Tesla had removed all DEI references from documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “DEI is just another word for racism,” Musk said on X. “Shame on anyone who uses it.” Musk endorsed Trump later in 2024, and his shift from tacit supporter of DEI to outspoken opponent was complete.
Musk made extensive public remarks on race in an hour-long interview last year with former CNN host Don Lemon. He denied accusations that he buys into the “great replacement theory,” a far-right trope that there is a deliberate effort to “replace” White people in Western societies with racial and ethnic minorities. “I’m simply saying there appears to be a very clear incentive for Democrats to have to maximize the number of illegals because it helps them win elections,” he said.
People should be rewarded for their talent and skills, Musk said, not their skin color. “I think being aware of inequities in society is fine, of course, but trying to make everything a race issue is, I think, divisive and corrosive to society,” he said.
Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, who defended Trump during his first impeachment trial and has discussed free speech issues with Musk, said he has become someone “worth listening to” by people across the political spectrum.
“He shoots from the hip sometimes, but I think he’s right about DEI,” Dershowitz said. “The left doesn’t really want diverse ideas, just diverse skin colors in the room.”
Musk walks out to speak before Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in New York on Oct. 27. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
A right-wing firebrand
Musk’s purchase of Twitter in 2022 marked a turning point in the evolution of his public persona from business-minded tech prodigy to pro-Trump champion of MAGA ideas.
He restored accounts suspended for hate speech and misinformation — including Trump’s — and later rebranded the platform as X. Advertisers fled. But Musk dug in. X sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate after it reported that the social media site was profiting by restoring accounts of “neo-Nazis, white supremacists, misogynists and spreaders of dangerous conspiracy theories.” A federal judge dismissed the case, calling it a blatant attempt to punish X’s critics.
On the right, Musk’s takeover of Twitter made him a hero. Fitton and other prominent conservatives view Musk’s running commentary about race relations as a crucial counterpoint to liberal rhetoric. “Maybe him pushing back is not what’s unusual — it’s the racial obsessions of the left that are the problem,” Fitton said.
Meanwhile, an outspoken minority of Tesla shareholders who manage sustainability-minded investments began pressing Musk to focus more on electric cars and less on divisive politics. His constant trolling of liberals on X has driven away potential customers and created a divisive work environment — since before the current backlash over his DOGE role, said Kristin Hull, founder of the Nia Impact Capital asset management firm. “He is always insulting somebody,” Hull said, “and that’s very problematic for investors and for the brand.”
In 2023, Musk fended off accusations of antisemitism following his attacks on the Jewish billionaire George Soros and the Anti-Defamation League and, most notably, after he promoted an X post accusing Jewish people of a “dialectical hatred against whites.” Musk wrote, “You have said the actual truth.”
Behind the scenes, several of Musk’s Jewish friends chided him and tried to act as brokers between him and the ADL, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. He later apologized for his social media post and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Israel in late 2023.
Musk also visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in early 2024. The European Jewish Association invited Gidon Lev, a Holocaust survivor who was eager to share his personal experiences with Musk.
Musk, however, was surrounded by an entourage of photographers and Shapiro, the Jewish right-wing podcaster, Lev said. Musk greeted him kindly but never engaged him in conversation, according to Lev. “There was no attempt by his part to make any human connection to me,” he said.
In an interview with Shapiro after the tour, Musk said, “It was incredibly moving and deeply sad and tragic that humans could do this to other humans.” The billionaire also reflected on his insular lifestyle: “I must admit to being somewhat, frankly, naive about this. In the circles that I move, I see almost no antisemitism. … I never hear it in dinner conversations.”
Musk, with his son, walks through the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 5. (Maansi Srivastava/For The Washington Post)
The keys to the government
When Trump returned to the White House, he gave Musk the keys to powerful government agencies while shielding him from some of the public disclosure requirements that bind other officials who command his level of influence.
Musk, who has a net worth of more than $320 billion, is leading the charge to eviscerate the U.S. Agency for International Development, which administers humanitarian assistance abroad. “USAID is a ball of worms,” Musk said. “There is no apple.” Last month, when the president halted all U.S. aid to South Africa and called for resettling White Afrikaners as refugees, both he and Musk made the baseless assertion that the government there is confiscating land from White people.
Musk has cheered Trump’s orders wiping out DEI programs and his decision to rescind a 1965 executive order requiring federal contractors to take “affirmative action” to root out discrimination. Proponents of DEI programs say they are designed to correct historical injustices and level the playing field for underrepresented groups. Musk and other Trump allies argue that such efforts are no longer needed and even a form of racism against White people. “One of the major reasons why I left the Democratic party,” Musk wrote on X a few months ago.
In late January, breaking with decades of precedent, Trump firedCharlotte Burrows, a Democratic commissioner on the EEOC who had initiated the investigation into Tesla. It was the only lawsuit filed by the EEOC in fiscal year 2023 that stemmed from an investigation recommended by an individual commissioner. Trump also replaced the agency’s general counsel, raising questions about whether the EEOC will continue to pursue the lawsuit. An EEOC spokeswoman said the commission does not comment on litigation. Burrows told The Post it would “betray the agency’s core mission” if the EEOC dropped the civil rights case. The racial discrimination case against Tesla brought by California’s civil rights agency is scheduled for a jury trial in September, according to court documents.
Amid Musk’s aggressive moves into government agencies, he also has faced questions about his gesture at Trump’s inaugural rally. In a recent podcast, Shapiro said it was clearly just a show of enthusiasm. “You know why my Nazi radar doesn’t go off around Musk? Because he’s not a damned Nazi,” Shapiro said, mocking the left for casting opponents as “not just wrong … evil.”
Musk also drew criticism in January for addressing a rally for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Germany’s domestic intelligence service considers the AfD a “suspected extremist case,” a designation affirmed by a court last year. There is “too much of a focus on past guilt,” Musk told the crowd, in what critics viewed as a rebuke of the Jewish community’s long-standing vow to never forget the Holocaust.
Gideon Fourie, who attended high school with Musk in South Africa and now lives in Germany, said he was shocked by Musk’s support for a party that is under investigation by national authorities for Islamophobia and radical anti-migrant stances.
“I am incredibly sensitive to racism because of where I came from, and for him to support this far-right party really blows my mind,” Fourie said. “Everything that has happened in the last few years was very contrary to the trajectory I thought he was on.”
Last month, Musk announced that he would rehire a DOGE staffer who resigned after the Wall Street Journal linked him to a social media account that advocated racism and eugenics. “To err is human,” Musk wrote, “to forgive divine.”
Pranshu Verma, Jeremy B. Merrill and Elizabeth Dwoskin contributed to this report.
Elon Musk, once a tacit backer of DEI, now focuses on anti-White bias
www.washingtonpost.com
Elon Musk, who was raised during South African apartheid, used to steer clear of debate about race. Now, he frequently advocates for White people.
Trump Union Busting Against AFGE TSA Members Is To Privatize Federal Workforce For Billionaires
AIRPORT SECURITY OFFICERS DENOUNCE TRUMP ADMIN DUMPING CONTRACT
www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article302299384.html
The local union representing transportation security officers denounced President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday morning outside the Robert T. Matsui United States Courthouse over its decision to strip employees of collective bargaining rights.
Earlier this month, Secretary Kristi Noem announced the Department of Homeland Security had terminated a contract between the federal government and Transportation Security Administration employees to remove “bureaucratic hurdles” and make the organization more efficient.
Transportation security officers in Northern California are represented by the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1230. The union approved a new contract with the federal government last year.
James Mudrock, president of AFGE Local 1230, called Noem’s action a “stab in the backs of officers, many of which are veterans.”
The union filed a federal lawsuit last week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington to block the contract’s termination. Airport security officers are covered by the same personnel system that governs most federal employees, known as Title 5.
DHS said eliminating the collective bargaining agreement would modernize the workforce.
“Thanks to Secretary Noem’s action, Transportation Security Officers will no longer lose their hard-earned dollars to a union that does not represent them,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement earlier this month.
Mudrock noted that a majority of airport security officers are union members. Members voluntarily pay dues, he added.
Ending AFGE’s contract is Trump’s first step in his attempt to privatize the TSA, Mudrock said, which is a recommendation included in the conservative policy agenda Project 2025. Mudrock said Trump’s billionaire allies can make a lot of money by replacing the TSA with private security firms.
Those contractors are more likely to cut corners, pay workers lower wages and give employees fewer benefits than unionized federal employees, Mudrock said.
Thomas Regpala, a veteran with over two decades of service with TSA, said the Trump administration’s actions could cost him and his colleagues their jobs. The TSA previously celebrated Regpala for helping a stranded passenger at Sacramento International Airport — now the veteran feels left behind by the federal agency.
“I fear that the billionaires are just waiting in wait to gobble up contracts at airports and throw us to the curb like our big boss threw a puppy into the gravel pit,” Regpala said, referring to Noem’s admission that she killed a family dog she believed was untrainable.
Regpala was joined by Mary Becker, another security officer, and her seven-week-old.
The new mom is currently on parental leave, but Noem’s latest action made Becker fearful that she might lose this benefit, which the union helped secure, while she’s away from work and caring for her newborn.
TSA union denounces Trump administration’s canceling collective bargaining agreement
www.sacbee.com
The union said stripping workers of representation was President Donald Trump’s first step toward privatizing airport security.
Striking San Jose ATU 265 Workers Rally For Their Strike Action & Managment Stalling
www.facebook.com/ATU265/videos/996888498594897
Trump to Pick Union-Busting Attorney for Key Labor Law Position
The National Labor Relations Board general counsel is a key policymaker shaping labor law. Crystal Carey, an attorney at anti-union firm Morgan Lewis, is the apparent choice.
prospect.org/labor/2025-03-17-trump-pick-union-busting-attorney-key-labor-law-position-nlrb/
BY DAVID DAYEN MARCH 17, 2025
The Trump administration will choose a partner at the notorious anti-union law firm Morgan Lewis to be the next general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, multiple sources tell the Prospect.
Crystal Carey is a former NLRB official from 2009 to 2018; she started as an intern with the Board and moved up to senior counsel, working on the Board and general counsel sides of the office. She became a partner last year at Morgan Lewis, which has been one of the most powerful management-side law firms in the country since the 1950s. Morgan Lewis attorneys have been involved in some of the most prominent labor battles in America since then, from the 1981 air traffic controllers strike to efforts by McDonald’s to resist the Fight for $15.
One of Morgan Lewis’s biggest current clients is Amazon, which used algorithmic management and surveillance tactics to prevent unionization at its warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, in 2021. Amazon also has an active lawsuit that seeks to declare the NLRB unconstitutional.
Carey, who is in her early forties, has been at Morgan Lewis since leaving the NLRB in 2018, mostly as a trial attorney. She became a partner last October. While union sources had heard that Carey’s name was “in the mix” for the critical NLRB general counsel position, she is not a high-profile person in the labor world.
It is unclear when the announcement will formally be made. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The selection would confirm that any talk of the second term of President Trump being in any way pro-labor was largely lip service or sheer fantasy. That was already fairly clear with the mass gutting of federal agencies though large-scale firings of workers, actions often at odds with federal employee protections. But hiring an attorney of a go-to union-busting law firm to administer labor law in the U.S. makes Trump’s position crystal clear.
Though some labor leaders, like Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, have hailed the confirmation of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who has in the past supported legislation that would make it easier for unions to win workplace elections, the reality is that labor secretary is not a big policymaking job, at least not compared to the NLRB general counsel. The general counsel sets priorities for NLRB cases, which govern union elections and rights in the workplace. The Labor Department has important priorities as well, but the work to end the slide in union density in the United States really begins at the NLRB.
The Teamsters did not return a request for comment on Carey’s pending appointment.
Under Biden’s GC Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB pursued an agenda that sought to level the balance of power between unions and management in America. During Abruzzo’s tenure, the NLRB reversed 12 decisions from Trump’s first term that weakened worker rights and made it harder to organize. It also banned “captive audience” meetings (where workers must listen to anti-union arguments from management), outlawed the practice of management claiming that unionized workers cannot bring grievances directly to supervisors, and determined that if a company commits unfair labor practices during a union election, then the union is automatically recognized and the employer must begin bargaining of a first contract. Another Abruzzo-led initiative, allowing workers to recover greater damages from being illegally fired for protected activities, was overturned in the courts.
When he took office in January, Trump fired Abruzzo and Board chair Gwynne Wilcox. The latter discharge was deemed illegal by a federal court, and Wilcox is now back on the job, giving the NLRB a temporary 2-to-1 Democratic Board majority. But Trump has the ability to appoint two members to the Board, putting it in Republican hands again.
With Carey as the general counsel, the Board will likely go about reinstating actions from Trump’s first term, and reversing Abruzzo’s initiatives. Given her background, Carey can be expected to be a cipher for management’s wishes.
There are certainly some people in the White House and the Republican Party more broadly who are not as rigidly opposed to organized labor, and may even support collective bargaining in certain cases. But that’s certainly not the prevailing opinion, as the installation of a Morgan Lewis lawyer as NLRB general counsel reinforces. If this appointment is any indication, the next four years look bleak for workers seeking to organize.
David Dayen is the Prospect’s executive editor. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His most recent book is ‘Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.’
Trump to Pick Union-Busting Attorney for Key Labor Law Position
prospect.org
The National Labor Relations Board general counsel is a key policymaker shaping labor law. Crystal Carey, an attorney at anti-union firm Morgan Lewis, is the apparent choice.
“In its Proudest Moments, the Labor Movement has Stood Firmly on the Side of the Oppressed”: UAW Columiban Union President Responds to Repression
www.leftvoice.org/in-its-proudest-moments-the-labor-movement-has-stood-firmly-on-the-side-of-the-…
We republish a statement written by Student Workers of Columbia union president, Grant Miner in response to his expulsion and firing from Columbia University.
Grant Miner
March 18, 2025
Student Workers of Columbia president, Grant Miner wrote the following response to Columbia University expelling and firing him, which we are republishing.. Miner’s expulsion and firing comes as Donald Trump, Columbia University, and universities throughout the country escalate repression of the movement for Palestine. Importantly, this statement speaks to the potential of the labor movement and higher education workers to play an important role in resisting these political attacks.
~
Last week, I was expelled from Columbia University for protesting the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza. As president of Student Workers of Columbia , Columbia’s student workers union, I was also fired from my job. The Trump administration is pushing their narrative. Here’s the real story.
Thousands of students across the country have been exercising our First Amendment rights to oppose genocide. Standing against genocide is not just a moral imperative—it is an act of anti-racism and solidarity. Columbia’s response? Expulsions, suspensions, and retaliation.
The Trump administration claims the student movement for Palestine is antisemitic and violent. They sent the DOJ to crack down on universities, kidnapped Mahmoud Khalil and other students, and are trying to silence us with fear.
I am Jewish, I work in Jewish studies, and I am not alone in opposing the ongoing genocide. The Jewish people know what genocide is. That’s why so many of us, alongside people of all backgrounds, are standing up against what’s happening in Palestine.
In its proudest moments, the labor movement has stood firmly on the side of the oppressed, and therefore on the side of justice. As president Student Workers of Columbia, I had an even greater responsibility to stand with my members who were beaten by the police just for protesting.
Columbia has caved to Trump’s demands at every turn. They have brought the NYPD onto campus to brutalize students. Now, they’ve let the Department of Homeland Security terrorize students in their own dorms.
Our union is here to defend student workers, and we won’t stand for this blatant repression from Columbia and Trump. Firing and expelling me just before bargaining is a transparent attempt to dodge accountability for endangering students. At the same time, we are facing over $400 million in politically motivated cuts to vital research, all in the service of suppressing pro-Palestine protest. Both our local and the United Auto Workers will fight to get these cuts reversed and ensure our members can continue their work.
The Trump admin crackdown has already failed. Last week, massive protests took place every single day. We are organizing. We are fighting back. This movement isn’t going anywhere. Release Mahmoud Khalil! Reinstate all students and workers. And as always, #FreePalestine
Columbia University
Labor Movement
Palestine
www.leftvoice.org
We republish a statement written by Student Workers of Columbia union president, Grant Miner in response to his expulsion and firing from Columbia University.
Guatemalan workers sue Iowa egg company, alleging human trafficking slave labor conditions
iowacapitaldispatch.com/2025/03/18/guatemalan-workers-sue-iowa-egg-company-alleging-human-traffic…
BY: CLARK KAUFFMAN – MARCH 18, 2025 4:02 PM
Six Guatemalans filed a lawsuit alleging a Centrum Valley Farms supervisor kept this gun displayed in his office and threatened them with deportation as part of a human trafficking operation at the Clarion egg farm. (Main photo courtesy Wright County Assessor’s Office; inset photo from federal court filings)
Six Guatemalan nationals who worked for Iowa industrial egg supplier Centrum Valley Farms are suing the company alleging human trafficking and claiming they and other immigrant workers were denied overtime pay and threatened with deportation in retaliation for their complaints.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa by attorneys for Guatemalan citizens Kenny Augusto Tetzaguic Lux, Gerver Noel Marroquin Argueta, Isaias Tevalan Lopez, Consuelo Esperanza Lux Tepaz, Cecilia Angelica Bernal Cobo and Juan Carlos Tetzaguic Lux, all of whom lived in Belmond, Eagle Grove, Clarion or Webster City while working for Centrum Valley Farms in recent years.
Named as defendants are Centrum Valley Farms of Clarion and company manager Jose Cornejo.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for harassment, discrimination and retaliation; wrongful discharge; human trafficking related to forced labor; violations of wage-and-hour laws related to overtime pay, and violations of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.
The plaintiffs claim Centrum Valley Farms recruited them to work at the company’s Clarion egg farm and packaging facility and helped them obtain work-authorization documents from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, with Cornejo acting as their supervisor.
On a daily basis, Cornejo, who is Mexican, made “repeated unwelcome comments disparaging the plaintiffs for their Guatemalan national origin,” the lawsuit claims. Cornejo is accused of telling the plaintiffs all Guatemalans were lazy and that he wanted to replace them with Mexicans or Americans.
When the Guatemalans complained about Cornejo to other managers, the harassment allegedly grew worse with Cornejo threatening to have them deported. “Cornejo even brought a firearm to work, showed it to the plaintiffs, and displayed it in his office to intimidate the plaintiffs and silence their complaints,” the lawsuit claims.
Cornejo also is accused of threatening to turn the Guatemalans into Immigration and Customs Enforcement if they tried to voluntarily leave their positions at the company.
“Centrum Valley Farms wanted obedient workers to perform difficult and undesirable job duties that many U.S. citizens are unwilling to perform,” the lawsuit alleges. The company eventually terminated the Guatemalans’ employment “in retaliation for their complaints,” the lawsuit adds.
According to the plaintiffs, Centrum Valley Farms hired Kenny Augusto Tetzaguic Lux under a pseudonym in 2016 because he did not have legal status to be in the United States. After working at Centrum Valley Farms for more than six years, the company’s management allegedly help him obtain documents to legally work in the United States, according to the lawsuit.
Later, company officials allegedly insisted that Lux keep working for Centrum Valley Farms, threatening to blacklist him to discourage him from seeking employment elsewhere, the lawsuit claims. As a poultry barn maintenance worker, Lux was allegedly instructed to keep working each day until all of his tasks were completed, resulting in him working more than 40 hours per week, but without overtime pay, according to the lawsuit.
On Jan. 25, 2023, Cornejo allegedly brought a firearm to his office and displayed it on his desk to intimidate Lux and the other Guatemalans, according to the lawsuit. On Oct. 7, 2023, Lux filed his first complaint with the Iowa Civil Rights Commission alleging discrimination based on his national origin, and on May 14, 2024, after being disciplined for insubordination, Lux was fired.
One of the other plaintiffs alleges Cornejo referred to him as his “faithful dog,” his “slave” and as his “Guatemalan wetback,” while making him apply pesticides in chicken houses without the necessary protective equipment.
The defendants in the case have yet to file a response to the allegations. Officials with Centrum Valley Farms did not return calls Tuesday from the Iowa Capital Dispatch.
Guatemalan workers sue Iowa egg company, alleging human trafficking • Iowa Capital Dispatch
iowacapitaldispatch.com
A lawsuit filed by six Guatemalan nationals accuses Iowa industrial egg supplier Centrum Valley Farms of human trafficking.
For A General Strike Against Trump’s Union Busting, Layoffs, Privatization and Mass Deportations and For Solidarity With Palestine
ufclp.org/for-a-general-strike-against-trumps-union-busting-layoffs-privatization-and-mass-deport…
UFCLP May 1st 2025 Call For United Front Labor Contingents On International Workers Day 2025
May Day 2025 is an international day of action for the world working class. May Day started in Chicago when mostly immigrant workers rallied in 1886 for an 8 hour day and were attacked and framed up with their leaders being hanged.
Today workers throughout the world and the US face a global depression, trade wars, racism, xenophobia, homophobia and massive attacks on worker and democratic rights. Trump and Musk and the fascists behind them are implementing the fascist Project 2025 Program that is aimed at destroying all public workers unions and privatizing all public services, public education and dispensing with any democratic rights through martial law.
The attack on the UAW president of Columbia University by his firing the day before contract negotiations is a declaration of war. The termination of the contract of 50,000 TSA workers and their union the AFGE is part of this open union busting drive that is just beginning. They are moving now to destroy medicaid, medicare and social security with massive layoffs and cuts that will mean hundreds of millions of working people with no healthcare and retirement. This is happening NOW!
Workers must unite in action on May Day to smash these assaults on our basic human and labor rights. Our unions must use their resources and power for a united fight back with action by the entire working class to bring down this fascist government.
The Democrats are helpubg Trump’s attacks and Democratic Senator and Zionist Schumer just supported a fascist budget plan pushed by Trump and his fascist cronies.
These attacks will not be stopped with appeals and letters to Congress. We need a united front of all public workers and a national day of action in a general strike of all workers on May Day 2025.
The political vacuum will only grow until working people and their unions break from the Democratic party and form a mass democratic labor party. Harris and the Democrats have brought us more militarism and a bi-partisan policy of trade wars, sanctions, support for genocide and encirclement of China in preparation for a world wide imperialist war. At the same time working people and labor must stand with the struggle of working people in Palestine and support a complete labor boycott of Israel.
The bi-partisan support for the Zionist genocide in Gaza and pogroms in the West Bank are escalating with both parties continue to give billions in weapons and aid to the criminal Zionist government. The pro-Zionist AFL-CIO leadership continue to support the corporatist Zionist union Histadrut and block calls for a labor boycott of all trade and weapons to Israel.
The mass starvation being implemented by the racist Netanyahu government is being completely backed as well by Trump and the Democrats who have allowed these war crimes and the destruction of schools, hospitals and the infrastructure of Gaza and now the West Bank.
In San Francisco the Labor Council which includes big supporters of Israel prevented any call for an end to the genocide and action by labor to stop these crimes. They are backed up by AFL-CIO president Liz Schuler who supports the racist Zionist regime and the Histadrut.
On May Day 2025 we call for a united front of trade unions and socialists to march and strike together to Support a National General Strike, A Labor Party and for the Victory of Palestinian Workers and People.
UFCLP.org
info @ufclp.org