Workers are fighting hard on back this Labor Day

Labor party this year takes on a special and urgent meaning. While we honor the sacrifices that the generations of workers have made to guarantee our most fundamental rights and freedoms, we are also faced with some of the most important threats to progress in modern times.

But as our union movement is facing solid opposite winds, we also know renewed energy and momentum – while arrow inequalities and the increase in costs inflament the indignation of the public and the desire for change. We must be clear and focused on what is at stake and organize ourselves with courage and resolve to successfully fight the powerful interests aligned against workers.

We invite all New Yorkers to join members of 1199seiu while we are mounting the fifth avenue under the banner of “Power in Unity” during the work parade next Saturday. Nurses and home care workers to teachers, construction workers, delivery drivers and hotel staff, workers get up, express themselves and demand the right to live in dignity.

It is almost impossible to detail all the manners, large and small, mean and cruel, that Donald Trump and the Republican leaders, supported by billionaires and business donors, try to erase decades of progress. Union rights, workplace protections and the viability of our social security net are at stake.

Many setbacks are aimed at industries using high percentages of immigrants, women and people of color. They range from the elimination of the requirements of the seat belt for the transport provided by the employer for agricultural workers, the inversion of a rule proposed so that workers have the right to water, in the shade and rest breaks, to the elimination of prolongations and minimum wage protection for home care workers. Nearly 400,000 employees in the Veterans Department, responsible for providing health care and other critical services to those who served our nation, have just been terminated their union contracts and their right to negotiate collectively revoked.

Soon, millions of Americans will suffer devastating consequences of the “Big Beau Bill Act” called “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which makes the biggest security net programs, in particular by eviscerating Medicaid of 1 Billion of dollars. 16 million people, including 1.5 million New Yorkers, will lose their health care coverage.

This increase in the number of uninsured people will be disastrous for the entire health system, especially on security and rural security hospitals which will be forced to reduce services and, in some cases, to close completely. We will see longer waiting times and higher costs for everyone – not just those of Medicaid. People on the plans of affordable care plans (ACA) will now face unnecessary and heavy administrative formalities to register and keep their health insurance, and those with insurance plans based on employer will also see higher bonuses.

At a time when so many Americans find it difficult to afford grocery products and other basic needs, the Republicans have reduced nearly $ 300 billion in the additional nutritional aid program (SNAP) which helps families with children, veterans and the elderly to offer themselves grocery store. Trump’s bill diverts enormous sums of money for permanent tax reductions for ultra-rich and to quadruple the budget for immigration raids and detention camps.

Republican leaders justified the bill by praising measures to combat the window which are ostensibly for the benefit of families of workers but which are riddled with limitations and attached chains. This includes, for example, “no tax on overtime”, which expires in just three years, has no impact on taxes on pay and strict annual pays.

The full impact of the bill will not be felt before 2027, when the most blatant Medicaid cuts occur – a calendar that the Republicans have designed to protect themselves from responsibility before the middle of next year.

With the apparently daily damage to workers, it would be easy to feel overwhelmed and hopeless. But the issues are too high, and the consequences that are too disastrous, for us to remain passive observers as decades of hardly won progress are canceled.

Organized work and workers in general do not drop without fighting. We are witnessing an increase in workers’ activism across the country, and public support for unions is now 70% – the highest in 60 years. Support has increased in all age groups but is particularly strong in workers in generation Y and generation Z which now represent the majority of American workforce.

As workers, our unity is our greatest strength. Thus, when a city like ours is targeted by Trump and its allies, trying to sow disunion and fear among our communities and to withdraw the rights and advantages which are rightly so, New York – the largest union city in the country – will not be silent.

Armstrong is president of 1199seiu, the country’s largest health care union.