Federal Workers Plan Feb. 19 Protests Against Trump-Musk Purge!
The Federal Unionists Network has so far scheduled protests in Washington, New York, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco. The New York rally is tentatively planned for Foley Square at noon, followed by an after-work protest outside a Tesla dealership.
By Steve Wishnia
“We are putting out a distress signal to the American people,” says Chris Dols of the Federal Unionists Network.
The group, founded two years ago by leaders of locals in various federal employees’ unions, is organizing protests February 19 against the Trump-Musk administration’s assault on federal workers. It’s using the slogan “save our services.”
“Now, it feels like we have to look out for the whole public,” says Dols, a dredging specialist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in New York who is president of Local 98 of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE). “We need the public to see that the attacks on federal workers are directly connected to their living conditions. It’ll devastate people’s lives.”
The network has so far scheduled protests in Washington, New York, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco. The New York rally is tentatively planned for Foley Square at noon, followed by an after-work protest outside a Tesla dealership.
The aim is to point out that “nobody voted for Elon Musk,” says Colin Smalley, a geologist with the Corps of Engineers in Chicago who is president of IFPTE Local 777.
Donald Trump has given Musk, arguably the world’s richest man and whose political sympathies include neo-Nazi parties in Germany and South African apartheid, free rein to axe nearly the entire staff at the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB); fire probationary employees; and tell almost all the 2.3 million federal employees that that they would get paid through September if they quit now, but that their jobs might be eliminated if they stayed.
The administration began terminating thousands of probationary workers, who have fewer protections because they’ve been on the job for less than one or two years, on Feb. 13.
“This administration has abused the probationary period to conduct a politically driven mass firing spree,” American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley said in a statement. “These firings are not about poor performance. They are about gutting the federal government, silencing workers, and forcing agencies into submission to a radical agenda that prioritizes cronyism over competence.”
The Trump administration claims about 75,000 workers took the buyout deal, which would require funds not yet appropriated by Congress. Three public-sector unions—the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; AFGE; and the smaller National Association of Government Employees, an SEIU affiliate—filed a lawsuit arguing that the directive was illegal, but a federal judge in Boston denied it on Feb. 12. He said the unions did not have standing to sue because the directive did not directly injure them, only the workers they represent.
“It’s a literal coup by these unelected oligarchs,” says Smalley. “They’re doing it as a signal that they’re going to indiscriminately deploy their power without regard to who it hurts.”
The Corps of Engineers, he says, is not as much a political target as USAID, whose foreign-aid programs help treat and prevent AIDS in Africa; the CFPB, which protects consumers from financial fraud; or the Environmental Protection Agency.
But enough workers took the buyout offer to impair services, says Dols, and management announced on Feb. 13 that it was breaking the union’s contract provision on telework.
“This is not about efficiency,” says Smalley. “It’s being done in the name of sowing chaos.” The administration, he adds, is forcing people to quit who “have the institutional knowledge to see when something’s inefficient.”
Musk, Smalley says, “believes that all federal workers are lazy” and working on useless, ideological projects. “In reality, we work on flood control and dredging harbors.” Federal workers also serve people getting Social Security and Medicare benefits.
He also cites Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, the Project 2025 architect who told a think-tank audience last year that “we want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected.”
“This is an escalation of a pre-existing pattern,” Smalley says. Federal workers have been demonized for decades, since President Ronald Reagan regularly declared that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I'm here to help.’” Before that, there was segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace, a direct ancestor of Trump’s political style: In his 1968 third-party presidential campaign, he denounced “pointy-headed bureaucrats” and pledged to “throw all of their briefcases into the Potomac River.”
“We aren’t hopeless here,” says Smalley. “It’s something we are prepared for. We’ve seen the prelude developing.” Workers were already irked about their health-insurance premiums going up 17% while they only got a 1.4% pay increase. Since the election, he told Work-Bites, Local 777’s membership has doubled from 70 to 140, out of 300 workers in the bargaining unit.
Dols blasts the “political negligence” of congressional Democrats, such as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who told reporters Feb. 7 that they had no leverage to resist because Republicans “control the House, the Senate and the presidency. It’s their government.”
“That’s never been the approach when Republicans are in the minority. They’ve always found a way to gum up the works,” Dols says. “That makes it all the more imperative for the labor movement to take the lead.”
The network is encouraging people to come to the Feb. 19 rallies wearing red, white, and blue, and for federal workers to carry signs stating what they do, Smalley told Work-Bites.
“If you don’t want to be flooded, let us work,” he says. “If you want your benefits, let us work. If you want crop insurance, let us work. If you don’t want to be ripped off by scammers, let us work.”
For updated information about the time and location of protests, go to savepublicservices.com.