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Cynthia Phinney is the president of the Maine AFL-CIO, a federation of over 200 unions representing 42,000 workers and retirees in the state of Maine.
Soon after Adolf Hitler was elected to power in 1933, he outlawed Germany’s trade unions. Union offices were ransacked, officials arrested. Some were murdered, others sent to the brand-new Dachau concentration camp. They were quickly joined by Social Democrats, Communists, gay men, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others who opposed the Nazi regime.
Authoritarian regimes — even regimes that claim to represent workers — attack unions. Because unions — workers joined together in common cause — have power. It differs from political power as we usually imagine it, because union power is ordinary people working together to make life better for one another. This is power wielded not to consolidate wealth at the top but to share prosperity widely and fairly. It is power wielded to constrain injustice.
Union power is the power of solidarity: Of seeing beyond our differences to what we have in common. It is the simple power of being there for one another.
Authoritarians attack unions because they need us so blinded by what seems to divide us that we can’t find common cause.
Take the current regime in the U.S.
When they marginalize women or black or brown people as “DEI hires,” they no longer pretend that “all men are created equal” is a principle that applies to all Americans.
When, in their war on immigrants, they arrest and depart people who are on their way to work, or even on their way to an asylum hearing, without due process, they no longer pretend that “liberty and justice for all” is their guiding principle. When they fire thousands of federal public service workers, or cancel their contracts, and strip them of their legally granted union rights, they can no longer pretend that the public these workers serve is us.
Their goal, I believe, is to intimidate us, keep us separate, keep us quiet, and make sure our solidarity power does not impede their efforts to accelerate the movement of wealth to the top. Their agenda is not ours.
The union “agenda” is well-being for all: Work in decent conditions, for wages that reflect a fair share of the wealth we produce, wages that will sustain a life of flourishing and health. The union agenda is for work that is meaningful in creating and sustaining a world where we, our children, and our children’s children can thrive.
In case we missed Project 2025, the current regime’s One Big Beautiful Bill spells out their agenda clearly for us: Tax cuts for the rich, bigger tax cuts for the very rich, a few small potatoes for the vanishing middle class, and cuts masquerading as non-cuts for anyone who might need help with anything.
What I see as their greed and dishonesty, their attacks on the pillars of a democracy that has evolved over 250 years, has created a crisis. But this time of crisis is also one of great opportunity for us.
Whether or not you have a union card in your wallet, whether or not you even draw a paycheck, that union tool of solidarity can be yours. Learn to wield it by opening your ears to hear beyond buzzwords, your eyes to see beyond superficial differences, and your hearts to show up for one another.
This Labor Day, let’s celebrate our solidarity, and let’s resolve to use it even more strongly and boldly than we have in the past to build the world we all want for ourselves, our families, our communities.
