In 1967, Wharlest Jackson was leaving work for the day at the Armstrong Tire and Rubber Company, finishing up an overtime shift in the formerly Whites-only role of chemical mixing. Jackson, a Black man and NAACP member, had recently been promoted into the higher-paying position after 11 years at the company. Full of hope, he would tell his friends, “My wife and children should have a chance now.” But, as he entered his car at the end of his shift, a bomb hidden under his pickup truck detonated. The explosion transformed the seat springs into projectiles that shot through Jackson’s body, killing him instantly. Jackson was murdered for challenging racial segregation at American job sites.
Civil Rights Advances
When Nancy MacLean opened her 2008 book “Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace” with Jackson’s story, she illustrated how popular perceptions of the Civil Rights movement have ignored the centrality of labor rights, especially protections against employment discrimination. Jackson’s murder underscores how one of the primary goals of the Civil Rights movement, which white supremacists vehemently opposed, was full inclusion in the American workplace. Civil rights organizations like the NAACP collaborated with progressive labor unions to build pressure for anti-discrimination protections within workplaces, from workplace-specific collective bargaining agreements to federal laws.
Their victories included the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin; the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which investigated Civil Rights Act violations; and Executive Order 11246, which instituted similar anti-discrimination policies for federal contractors. These efforts inspired women’s, disability rights, and LGBTQ+ movements, which similarly fought for inclusion in workplaces they had long been both excluded from and discriminated against within. They also inspired decades of reactionary backlash, which often failed. Even Ronald Reagan tried to rescind Executive Order 11246 after facing unexpectedly strong civil rights and labor opposition.
Trump’s Backlash
Now, the backlash against labor and civil rights is rapidly advancing. After Donald Trump and Elon Musk took control of the executive branch in January 2025, one of their first priorities has been to dismantle what they call “woke,” “DEI” (diversity, equity, and inclusion), and “DEIA” (diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility). These are notoriously broad and vague terms, but Trump and Musk’s actions tell a clear story about what they have in mind. Trump and Musk seek to strip the US of any and all workplace segregation and discrimination protections.
One of Trump’s first executive orders was to rescind Executive Order 11246. He has since set his sights on disability rights like Section 504 and innumerable federal programs that promote anti-discriminatory hiring practices, research into discrimination and accessibility, and any programs that mention keywords like environmental justice, equality, and inclusion. With a few strokes of a pen, Trump and Musk are continuing in the tradition of Wharlest Jackson’s murderer, lashing out against inclusion and seeking to roll back even the most basic civil rights.
Unions are among our best tools for protecting our rights and each other. On a more basic level, Trump can’t undo the anti-discrimination clauses of union contracts with the stroke of a pen. Standing together and building collective power is our best chance at putting up a substantive fight. And, as universities and politicians bend the knee and delete their DEI policies in what many are calling “anticipatory obedience,” unions can lead the fight for an alternative: anticipatory defiance.
Collective Bargaining Agreements
Union contracts, or collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), are legal documents of rights, benefits, and protections that workers win through organizing and threatening to strike. While Trump can rescind an executive order, he can’t cancel federal workers’ collective bargaining agreements, much less state and private workers’ contracts. As the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union has pointed out, Trump’s executive orders do not comply with their own collective bargaining agreements. These CBAs have led to the development of “a diverse federal workforce that looks like the nation it serves, with the lowest gender and racial pay gaps in the country.”
Historically, union contracts have been far more expansive than the basic civil rights made into law in the 1960s. As MacLean points out, for protections against gender discrimination, “Unions had collective bargaining agreements and grievance procedures to enforce fair treatment in workplaces that neither the EEOC, with its cramped authority, nor feminist movement, operating on the outside, had.” After the passing of civil rights laws in the 1960s, MacLean recalls, it was unions like the International Union of Electrical Workers that became leaders in advancing civil rights further. While unions declined later in the 20th century, the fact remained that unions were well-positioned to advocate for equality and inclusion through both their contracts and, of course, through collective action.
Collective Action
While the Trump administration may try to ignore union contracts and court decisions, they can’t prevent people from standing together. Our employers rely on us to run their institutions, make their revenue flow, and make their products. By unionizing, workers become better positioned to leverage their collective power to withhold our crucial labor. They can use this to both resist new discriminatory policies and advance causes for economic, racial, gender, and disability justice. This requires unions to prepare, not just to build collective power, but exercise it too. When a boss discriminates against one of our co-workers or deletes anti-discrimination policies, we should be prepared to protest collectively and immediately.
Trump and Musk are trying to dismantle the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). That would mean the board would be unable to enforce labor laws and union contracts. That will make collective action all the more important in the coming years. The NLRB was founded in 1935 to instill “labor peace,” preventing strikes by providing layers of bureaucracy. If the NLRB isn’t around to rule against bosses, it also won’t be around to rule against workers. Workers must rapidly rebuild a culture of spontaneous collective action, such as collectively walking off the job in response to harassment, weak anti-discrimination policies at work, or new, regressive federal laws and court rulings, as Activision workers have over the past several years, if we hope to transform collective organizing into true collective power.
Anticipatory Defiance
Many institutions that spoke out against the first Trump administration, such as universities, nonprofits, and the Democratic Party, are taking a markedly different approach this time around. Some, like Senate Democrats, are using a “wait and see” strategy in hopes that Trump’s unmitigated actions backfire. Others, including some universities and nonprofits with federal funding, are proactively stripping their websites, research, and programs of anything that looks like DEI.
Citing scholars of authoritarianism, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) calls this approach “anticipatory obedience”: complying even before they are pressured or directed to do so. The AAUP, which includes unions representing professors, called for its members to not obey in advance but instead proactively organize to strengthen our rights, policies, and power. As the AAUP stated plainly, “Now is not the time to be complacent. Now is the time to act.”
The labor movement must also adopt this attitude. Many of our bosses are following Trumps’ lead in rolling back civil rights and removing even the most basic policies and rhetoric surrounding inclusion, which were often limited compromises to begin with. In response, we should be organizing to build new unions, strengthen existing ones, and expand protections against discrimination. Unions have concrete benefits, from anti-discrimination clauses to higher, more equitable wages, and they also provide a means to build collective power. That is how we both resist the rise of authoritarianism and work towards a truly just and equitable world.
