‘We’re putting billionaires on notice’

Hundreds of workers gathered to protest attacks on higher ed & medical research by the anti-worker federal administration and its billionaire puppet masters

SEATTLE, WA (February 20, 2025) — Academic workers, allied union members, and community rallied on the UW Seattle campus yesterday as part of a national day of action mobilizing against the Trump & Musk administration’s attempts to gut funding for lifesaving medical research and higher education.

The administration’s hacking cuts would interrupt essential research that develops life-saving treatments.

“The work we do does save lives and I’m proud that I will have contributed something to helping leukemia patients in the future. But I can’t do this without a stable source of funding and so much of that comes from the NIH,” said Philip Creamer, a postdoc at UW in the School of Medicine in the Division of Hematology and Oncology.

Photo: UAW Region 6

Workers were also joined by Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and WSLC, AFL-CIO President April Sims.

Jayapal called out the administration officials who are blindly slashing funding, as if they don’t understand what they are cutting.

“What they call overhead is actually the ability to source and fund labs here at the University of Washington…this work that requires significant investments to provide the lifesaving treatments that we need in this country,“ said the Congresswoman.

While the administration claims a mandate to redesign the federal government, Republican proposals to cut taxes for the ultrawealthy raise questions about the actual purpose of this so-called efficiency push. Notably anti-worker, the effect of this administration’s attacks on public funding is to pull resources away from the people in order to pad the pockets of billionaires.

“Oligarchs, and the politicians they own, think that there are no guardrails,” said Sims. “They think they can do whatever they want, without any consequences. But today, we’re putting them on notice. Billionaires did not build this country — workers did. We built it with our hands and our minds and we hold it up on our backs.”

WSLC President April Sims. Photo: UAW Region 6

Nationally, higher ed workers are escalating pressure. On Tuesday, the Labor for Higher Education coalition will be holding a hybrid action with an in-person press conference and rally in front of the Department of Health & Human Services in D.C., alongside a simultaneous online nation-wide phonebanking action to drive more attention to the issue, urging lawmakers to intervene against these funding cuts.

Photo: UAW Region 6

Learn more about upcoming actions at labor4highered.org