Labor’s Current Moment: Interview with Carl Rosen

As the Trump administration wages an aggressive campaign to slash public services and the federal workforce, deport immigrants, and criminalize dissent, the working class is under siege. But across the country, labor is stirring to fight back. On the Line interviewed Carl Rosen, General President of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) to talk about this moment in history, the failures of the Democratic Party that led us here, the need for a working-class political alternative, and why labor must organize for real power.

Husayn Karimi: We find ourselves living in a time of intense political instability and crisis after crisis for working people. The billionaires are on a massive offensive – cutting major social programs and spending that workers fought and died for like SNAP, housing assistance, medicare, and social security, laying off hundreds of thousands of federal workers, rolling back the gains of the civil rights movement, promoting a deeply racist mass deportation program – generally waging an all out war on the working class. In response to these attacks, unions are going to need to play a key role in defending ourselves as working people from the onslaught and fighting back to defeat it.

First, what do you make of the moment we are in?

Carl Rosen: For us, this isn’t some sudden turn – it’s a continuation of a long historical process. You can trace it back to the late 1940s, when the labor movement and the broader U.S. left were hit with severe repression during the McCarthy era. The best, most militant trade unionists – those with a vision of worker power independent of political and corporate control – were driven out of the unions, and often out of public life entirely.

That fundamentally weakened our ability to fight for working-class standards. Over time, the labor movement was domesticated and pulled into the bipartisan consensus, where both parties largely served corporate interests. When Reagan smashed PATCO in 1981 and labor didn’t respond forcefully, that marked a huge shift – and it was mostly downhill since then.

HK: And now we’re seeing this new far-right offensive under Trump. How does that fit into this longer trajectory?

CR: Trump’s rise is the symptom of decades of decay. Deindustrialization hollowed out towns across the Midwest, the South, Appalachia, and the inner cities – particularly communities of color. People have every right to be angry. But instead of a left movement offering real solutions, the political establishment used scapegoating – immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ folks – anyone but the corporate class to blame for our problems.

The Trump administration now is taking it further – actively dismantling what remains of the social safety net, criminalizing protest, and carrying out a massive power grab for the wealthiest Americans. It’s brutal. But it’s also been a long time coming.

HK: What about the Democrats? Many people hoped they’d offer resistance to Trump, but that hasn’t really happened in a meaningful way yet beyond rhetoric and lawsuits. How do you see the role of the Democrats leading up to this crisis and where we are now?

CR: Look, the Democrats have been complicit all along. Obama could’ve rewritten the rules in 2008 when he came in after the economic crash. He had a clear mandate. But what did he do? He handed the economy to the very people who caused the crisis – Wall Street. Instead of building a New Deal-style recovery, we got slow growth, low wages, and more wealth flowing to the top.

Biden did a few good things at first – COVID relief, the expanded child tax credit – but then yanked them away. That kind of betrayal erodes trust fast. It’s really no wonder working people feel like they’ve been played by both parties.

Despite how unpopular Trump’s policies are, Republicans are still polling better than Democrats somehow. That’s how badly the Democrats have lost their base. People aren’t buying what they’re selling. And the problem isn’t just electoral. It’s structural. The Democratic Party is run by a wing of the corporate class. They’ll slam the door on anyone who threatens that arrangement – just like they did with Bernie Sanders, twice.

HK: UE’s been a long-time supporter of independent working-class politics. What is your vision for a labor-backed political alternative?

CR: Our position since the 1940s has been clear: the working class can’t rely on the two corporate parties. We helped found the Labor Party in the 1990s with the slogan, “The bosses have two parties – labor needs one of its own.”

Unfortunately, that effort didn’t fully take off, in part because we lacked large national unions and because it was a different moment then. But now the crisis is deeper and so is the urgency. We can’t take the strategy we did then and wait decades to build a base. We need to run independent, working-class candidates now. That means organizing locally, fielding candidates in Democratic primaries where it makes sense, and running independent or unaffiliated campaigns in areas dominated by Republicans.

What matters is a clear break with corporate politics. We need candidates who fight for labor, for taxing the rich, for rebuilding the public sector, and who aren’t afraid to challenge power directly.

HK: What role do you see the labor movement having in leading that effort?

CR: Labor has to be a foundation. We’re not big enough on our own anymore, but we’ve got organizing power, resources, and structure. We can anchor something broader. We need unions that are willing to put real money and organizing muscle behind this effort—not just endorsements, but serious investment.

And as we do that, we need to also mobilize around immediate fights – not just elections in 2026 or 2028. That means strikes, protests, direct action. We’ve got to make it clear that there will be consequences for the corporate class if they keep pushing this anti-worker, anti-democracy agenda.

HK: Let's turn to the higher ed sector, where UE has seen tremendous growth. What do you think is driving this surge in campus organizing?

CR: Higher ed is a perfect example of where young workers see through the system. Grad workers, adjuncts, researchers – they all see the contradiction. Universities run like corporations, using public funds while cutting wages and cracking down on political expression. These workers are overworked, underpaid, and increasingly radicalized by what they see.

UE’s been organizing in higher ed aggressively since 2020, and we've brought in tens of thousands of new members. What’s exciting is the level of militancy and political consciousness. They’re not just fighting for raises. They’re fighting for free expression, for immigrant rights, and against the war on Gaza. That’s real solidarity and it’s already having a broader impact on labor.

HK: The political repression has been getting more intense, especially around Palestine. Mahmoud Khalil was the first to be picked up for his organizing and threatened with deportation. He has become a broader symbol of the fight against political repression of students organizing for Palestine. How are you seeing this case and what it represents?

CR: It’s chilling. The Mahmoud Khalil case is one of the most extreme examples. A union leader, green card holder, not charged with a crime, suddenly detained and deported threats hanging over his head. It’s all because he was involved in pro-Palestine organizing at Columbia.

The Trump administration froze $400 million in federal funding to the university and demanded they discipline student organizers. Within hours, DHS and ICE were on campus. It’s repression designed to make an example out of organizers to scare everyone else into silence.

HK: But the pushback was bigger than they expected, right?

CR: Yes, and that’s important. When you’ve even got people like Bill Maher, Ann Coulter, and Chuck Schumer – no friends of the Palestine movement by any means – all saying, “Wait a second, this is wrong,” it shows that the Trump administration may have overplayed its hand. Even the Chicago Tribune, not exactly a friend to labor, ran a scathing editorial criticizing Khalil’s detention. These are all signs of the way the winds are blowing.

We can win this. And if we do, it could be a turning point – showing that this administration isn’t invincible, that it can be defeated by mass resistance.

HK: One of the main points of leverage Trump has used over Columbia was threatening massive funding cuts, at the same time they are gutting the Department of Education and threatening other public education funding for K-12. There seems to be a deliberate effort to dismantle public education entirely, especially for vulnerable communities.

CR: Absolutely. The MAGA agenda includes gutting K-12 programs that serve immigrant students, disabled students, English language learners, anyone who requires additional support. They see it as a waste of money.

In higher ed, they’re slashing public health research, NIH funding, and trying to privatize what’s left. It’s about defunding anything that doesn’t directly benefit corporate profits. And they don’t care who gets hurt. Urban kids, rural communities, it doesn’t matter. But those cuts are going to hit their own base too. That’s an opening for organizing.

HK: What’s labor’s role in defending public education and academic freedom against these attacks?

CR: We have to fight on multiple fronts. We need to defend student protesters. We need to defend immigrant workers. And we need to confront university administrations that go along with this repression.

Historically, we’ve seen this before. In the 1950s, the McCarthy committees would target UE locals right before contract negotiations. They’d drag our leaders into court, declare them “security risks,” and companies would fire them on the spot. It was a union-busting strategy. What changed it? Strikes.

In one case where they tried to do this, we moved the picket line from the factory to right in front of the federal courthouse. The committee chair suddenly developed a stomach ache, and the hearings were canceled. That’s the kind of direct, coordinated pressure we need again to stand up to this.

HK: We need to be organizing, mobilizing, and ultimately striking in bigger ways than we have in generations of the labor movement.

CR: Exactly. A bad boss is the best organizer, and we’ve got the worst boss possible in the White House. That’s creating space for new organizing, especially among young workers. People are seeing they have no choice.

Our job as unions is to turn that anger and resentment into power. That means strikes. That means campaigns. That means building a movement big enough and bold enough to challenge the billionaires – and win.

HK: Do you have a final message for workers who want to fight back?

CR: Don’t let the bastards get you down. Your rights are our rights. If we stay united, organized, and willing to take risks, we can win. And we have to – because there’s too much at stake not to.