AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler says union ready to stand up for struggling Americans: ‘Which side are you on?’
Donald Trump has staged a year of “unrelenting attacks on working people,” according to the head of the largest federation of the labor unions in the US. Now they’re preparing to fight back.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said it was gearing up to challenge the US president’s “Billionaire First” agenda in 2026 – and drive candidates in key elections to stand up for “struggling” Americans.
In an interview with the Guardian, she described how the federation has pushed to restore collective bargaining rights for federal workers, and filed lawsuits against the Trump administration’s efforts to weaken unions and worker protections. “People were pissed,” said Shuler.
The House of Representatives passed a bill on 11 December that would restore collective bargaining rights for federal workers in response to Trump’s executive orders that stripped the rights from more than 1 million federal government employees.
“It was through a lot of good old-fashioned organizing,” said Shuler, who accused the president of overseeing “the biggest attack on unions in our history” by moving to eliminate collective bargaining for federal workers.
The AFL-CIO is now steeling itself for a fight to pass the bill in the Senate in January, kicking off what it likely to be another hectic year. The threat of another government shutdown looms at the end of January. The fight over extending Affordable Care Act subsidies is far from over.
“We’re organizing as we speak,” said Shuler. “We can move actual people, in workplaces, in every city, in every state, across the country.”
Affordability has come into sharp focus, with inflation still stubbornly above typical levels, and many Americans grappling with rising bills and prices. The federation intends to build momentum into the 2026 midterm elections on such kitchen table issues, according to Shuler, who said labor organizations were already reaching out to working people, canvassing and knocking on doors, in an effort to break through the noise.
“People are fed up,” she said. “They’re saturated. I think they’re distrustful of institutions and the media. All of the folks that we have come to rely on over the years seem to be waning in trust, and there’s only one organization left that people do trust, and that’s the labor movement, unions. Our credibility and trust is actually going up. And so we think that we have to capitalize on what our sweet spot is, which is using our sphere of influence.”
