Workers over billionaires

As billionaires rampage through government, the AFL-CIO encourages working people to share how this anti-worker agenda has impacted them

WASHINGTON D.C. (February 13, 2025) — Under a cover story of “efficiency,” an unelected billionaire is dismantling the government agencies and structures that provide essential public services and protect working people from exploitation. In a frantic dash intended to destabilize and overwhelm, the new federal administration has empowered the richest man in the world to play puppet master with government agencies that had used their power to hold him accountable.

The scope of harm caused by these actions — both to workers and to constitutional safeguards — is still emerging. But in the immediate term, actions aimed at dismantling essential public services and remaking the federal government under an anti-worker, anti-immigrant agenda are already impacting working families. Chaotic executive orders are fueling uncertainty and confusion.

That’s why the AFL-CIO launched the Department of People who Work for a Living, and why they’re encouraging working people to use the platform to share how they’ve been impacted by the new administration’s attacks on workers. No matter how much the President and his billionaire bros lecture about “efficiency,” the reality is that their cuts target aspects of government designed to support working people. While the administration tries to hide the real-world impacts of their agenda through bureaucratic productivity speak, working families pay the price.

Directives to cut vast percentages of staff and rarely rehire means not enough nurses at VA hospitals. Gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau leaves working people even more at the mercy of corporate greed. Detention and deportation of immigrants tears up working communities and destabilizes our economy. Illegally firing National Labor Relations Board members leaves workers with little recourse to force bosses to respect collective bargaining rights.

This is not efficiency, but corporate greed. The only result of government remade to fit a billionaire’s whims is exploitation of working people. That’s why sharing stories of real-world impact is so important; it cuts through the administration’s propaganda, showing how these attacks on workers are clearly intended to disempower. 

It’s one of the ways working people can fight back, but not the only tactic. A wave of federal workers have joined their union by the thousands. Those workers and their allies have been disrupting this administration’s billionaires-first agenda. Locally, working people are turning out by the hundreds all over Washington to support immigrants. 

The stakes are clear. In the words of AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler: “The government can work for billionaires or it can work for working people—but not both.”

Sign up here for updates on the AFL-CIO’s work to combat this administration’s anti-worker agenda and use this form to share how you and your family have been impacted.