Dr. Melina Abdullah, Contributing Opinion WriterNovember 19, 2025
What this Fascist Moment Demands of Labor Unions
“Democracy Is Union Made” – SEIU 2025 Convention Theme
Thousands poured out of the auditorium at the center of Los Angeles Trade Technical College on Saturday to pay tribute to international labor leader, immigrant rights organizer, nonviolence practitioner, professor, and longtime Director of the UCLA Labor Center, Kent Wong.
Virtually every current, former, and aspiring elected official, union head, and community organizer made a showing. Attendees were young, old, and everything in between. People spoke in Spanish, Tagalog, and Ebonics. Laughter was louder than cries. Embraces were long and heartfelt. Tears flowed as Kent Wong’s son played “A Song for My Father,” on his flute, calling in the spirit of his dad. Sister-President of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, Yvonne Wheeler, brought such a fitting homegoing to fruition.
The occasion closed with Dolores Huerta taking the stage – still, at 95, one of the most powerful beings to ever walk the planet – we rose to our feet and chanted, “Si, se puede!” Fists raised. Voices booming. Sure that victory for workers was coming.
Many of those same faces were gathered inside a hotel ballroom last weekend for the SEIU statewide convention. The sign on the podium read, “Democracy is union made.” People patted SEIU and USWW President David Huerta on the back and clapped thunderously every time he rose. In June, David was brutalized, arrested, and held for days in a detention center as he courageously stood against the Los Angeles ICE raids.
Labor unions were absolutely necessary in the clapback against Trump’s attempt to gerrymander seats in Texas, passing Proposition 50 in California as a response. Union members up and down the state to knock doors, make calls, and publicly campaign to pass the special election ballot measure with a whopping 65% of the vote. Unions are working to intervene in the massive layoffs of public employees and supporting the rights of workers to demand fair wages – unionized or not.
Passing Proposition 50, blocking federal layoffs in court, standing up against ICE, hosting conventions, even hosting Kent Wong’s epic memorial, takes more than enthusiasm, vision, and will. All of it takes money…union dues. Unions spent an estimated $25 million to get Proposition 50 passed. When federal employees forced to work for 43 days without pay, unions stepped in to provide urgently needed mutual aid. Attorneys to battle in courtrooms and at bargaining tables don’t come free. Convention hotels have to be paid for. Unions are the most viable force against fascism because they have people power and dollars.
The Trump regime understands that labor unions are one of the greatest forces against fascism. This is why he signed an executive order stripping federal workers of their collective bargaining rights, stacked the National Labor Relations Board with his anti-worker cronies, blocked increases to the federal minimum wage, and made it harder for workers to unionize. With each Trump move, unions have fought back and continue to organize using just about every tool to win back what was lost and more.
And while I am an ardent supporter of unions, serving in leadership for my own union, and active in the larger labor movement, unions as they stand are – for the most part – failing to meet the moment. More than 100,000 lives have been stolen in Palestine, and unions accept contracts that require laborers to load weapons on ships bound for Israel. Labor has allowed police into its formations – even though cops are responsible for killing at least 1200 (mostly) working class people every year. Some have gone so far as to endorse Donald Trump. (I’m looking at you Sean O’Brien of the Teamsters!)
Labor unions in Italy have staged several strikes, refusing to be complicit in genocide. A group of unionists here called Labor for Palestine are calling on unions to protect their workers by refusing to make them complicit in the genocide of Palestinians. In October, founder of the Amazon Labor Union, Chris Smalls, gathered hundreds of people at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, DC, to demand that the flow of weapons to Israel be disrupted. We stormed the building, delivering a petition signed by more than 3000 people.
My union – the California Faculty Association – is a decidedly racial and social justice union. Beyond negotiating salaries and benefits, CFA is working to enact policies that protect working class people (and block ones that bring harm). For the last few contracts, under President Cecily Myart-Cruz, UTLA has bargained not only for better pay and working conditions for teachers, but for schools to serve as sites of learning, nurture, and creativity, as they “bargain for the public good.”
For the democracy that must be union made to be realized, to sufficiently honor Kent Wong, and to harness the power of this moment, Unions must step into their deepest visions and reclamation of their purpose…to make the world better for its workers.
