Human rights, civil rights and labor right are inextricably connected. Just ask the people who are attacking them. the Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, for example.
DeVos has been roundly criticized for undermining protections against all manner of abuses to which students are subject.
Consider that Devos wants to end the restrictions on disparate school discipline which sees black students more harshly penalized than white students. Similarly, protections against discrimination against LGBT students are being rolled back as are regulations regarding campus sexual violence at colleges and universities.
Obama-era rules governing the treatment of racial minorities in special education are also being undercut. Black children are placed in special education at far higher rates than white children and frequently taught in essentially segregated settings.
Secretary DeVos and the Trump administration are rolling back for-profit college rules. These Obama’s-era rules offer students protections against victimization by for-profit schools that fraudulently promise gainful employment outcomes to graduates and saddle students with large student loan debts.
All of these abuses are now compounded by DeVos’ attack on the employees of the Department of Education and their unions. DeVos has unilaterally imposed what she calls a “contract” on the DoEd’s nearly 4,000 employees, who are represented by the AFGE. The imposed terms severely restrict the union in its statutory responsibility to represent its members and seek to bust the union with annual membership sign-ups.
The AFGE has filed charges, equivalent to unfair labor practice charges in the private sector, with the Federal Labor Relations Authority. AFGE warns that what DeVos is doing to subvert union rights is going on at other agencies such as the Veterans Administration, too.
The mission statement of the FLRA says: The FLRA promotes stable, constructive labor-management relations through the resolution and prevention of labor disputes in a manner that gives full effect to the collective-bargaining rights of employees, unions, and agencies. Let’s see how that stands up in the Trump-era.
The Trump administration’s attack on rights is broad. The coalition to oppose these regressive actions needs to be broad as well.