Proclaiming Labor Day 2025 unlike any other “in the history of our movement and our country,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler reports that workers nationwide are asking her “Why is my future being ripped away?”

Her answer is billionaires and corporations totally control the government and move to exert total control over every aspect of U.S. life. That their leading instrument is Donald Trump. And that the labor movement is—and must be—the biggest force standing in their way.

“We’ve seen greedy CEOs and billionaires before, but we’ve never seen CEOs and billionaires in full control of our lives. Four are running government agencies…The state of working people is under attack.

“This is a president who wants to strip people of their working rights,” Shuler added about the anti-worker GOP president, Trump.

Labor has fought back, especially against corporate control of the government. “We filed lawsuits, we demonstrated and we organized,” Shuler said in her annual State of the Unions speech on August 27.

“And we’re one step away from passing the Support America’s Workers Act,” designed to reverse Trump’s massive federal union-busting, Shuler added. “That ability to take on power is what unions do….It’s why we can unite people around values we all agree on.”

But labor needs allies in its fight against the oligarchs, Shuler admitted in her speech, available on the AFL-CIO.tv section of the labor federation’s website. 

“If you believe in common sense, if you’re ready to stand up to the billionaires, if you’re ready to build the kind of country we deserve, come join us,” Shuler urged everyone—especially in a whole year of action, starting on Labor Day, to achieve anti-oligarchy and pro-worker goals.

Shuler didn’t spare either major party for responsibility for that oligarchic threat to democracy. It’s been festering for decades, as both Democrats and Republicans are co-opted by the corporations and the rich, she said.

“This didn’t start with Donald Trump. This is a system that has hurt people for more than 40 years. And if we push people to the edge, we can’t be surprised if working Americans turn against the system.”

And turn they have. The Pew Research Center reported two months ago that its annual survey of satisfaction with democracy showed opinion in the U.S. was 62% negative, 37% positive. It’s been that way for years now. 

 Members of the two major parties flipped positions after the 2024 election, Pew reported, as Democrats turned negative and Republicans turned positive. Overall dissatisfaction stayed the same. By contrast, Pew reported Canadians were 60%-39% positive about their democracy, and their government. 

 And in the U.S., like other nations where satisfaction with democracy slid, economic inequality and conditions—which Shuler dwelt on in her speech—have a lot to do with that negativity.

“Outside this building, there are 2,000 federal troops on the ground: Blocking peaceful streets, harassing working people. Costing workers, as taxpayers, tens of millions of dollars.” That money could be spent “expanding health care, funding our schools, or housing those on our streets.

“Where is the common sense? Where are the lower costs on my groceries, my rent, my medicine? Why are my job, my family, my future, my community, the services I count on suddenly being threatened and ripped away?

“We wanted cheaper groceries. We got tanks in the streets,” she said in a veiled shot at Trump. On the campaign trail last year, Trump promised to lower grocery prices, but hasn’t achieved that. He’s now sent Humvees filled armed with National Guards into the streets of D.C., and weeks ago sent Marines into downtown Los Angeles. 

“We wanted affordable health care. Instead, we got 16 million people to be kicked off the health care rolls,” Shuler said. Those people will lose coverage due to Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” which featured a $4.5 trillion 10-year tax cut for corporations and the 1%.

 And Shuler pointed out another obvious facet of the Trump regime: Fostering hate.

“This administration wants to convince people we are each other’s enemies,” she said, after mentioning ICE raids grabbing people. One Hispanic-named man in upstate New York was grabbed and so were his daughters, Shuler noted.

In both D.C. and L.A., the troops guard Trump’s ICE agents. The agents invade stores, schools, religious institutions and hospitals—and even violently beat and drag people out of their cars—because of their brown skin. Chicago, Trump says, is next. That’s not right, Shuler said.

“We are not each other’s enemies. We are each other’s friends, neighbors and co-workers. And we are all suffering under the same broken system.

“When this administration fired federal workers who have made up our civil service for decades—disproportionately hurting Black workers and communities of color—cutting the programs so many working families depend on, telling our educators, ‘Don’t talk about Harriet Tubman and the Tuskegee Airmen in our schools,’ our teachers, our civil servants, our members all over this country stood up and said: ‘Hell no!’

“And when this administration came for immigrant workers” who “were snatched off the streets, disappeared and detained in for-profit prisons without charges or due process, we rallied around them. We trained an entire grassroots army of union activists, organizers, and members so we could exercise our constitutional rights, and fight for their release, and keep them here with their families, where they belong.”

“Politics alone won’t fix this,” Shuler pointed out. “There are members of both sides” of the political party aisle “who would happily let you get automated out of a job if they get a campaign check from your CEO.”

That sequence continues criticism Shuler has strongly voiced before about the baleful influence of corporate money in politics. She’s repeatedly demanded the Democrats—whose National Committee includes many union leaders—swear off such campaign cash, at least in party primaries. Heeding big givers, the party has refused. 

The Republicans have no such qualms. They’ve eagerly sued, and won at the Supreme Court, campaign finance cases, starting with Buckley vs Valeo in the 1970s. All those cases weakened campaign finance laws and removed curbs on big money, including big corporate money and so-called “dark money” whose donors can stay secret.

That’s become part of the frustration of working people, and one reason confidence in government and other institutions is at a low, Shuler said. Unions are the exception, though. Shuler stated an all-time high of “75% believe in unions, because they’ve seen unions deliver, again and again.”

This year’s annual survey, from the Gallup organization, is not out yet. Last year’s showed 71% were very positive or somewhat positive about unions, with a 47% positive-negative gap. Other institutions, including both parties, the president, Congress, corporations and the courts, are all in the red.

Shuler also spoke against a backdrop of Trump’s extermination of more than 30 union contracts covering a million federal workers. That denies them collective bargaining rights, union protections, worker rights and more. She’s legitimately called Trump the biggest union-buster in U.S. history.

And she spoke against a backdrop of “2,000 troops on the streets of D.C.” including those massed in front of the White House two blocks from the AFL-CIO headquarters. 

They’re part of an occupying—and armed—army of National Guards from red states sent to D.C., supposedly to help D.C. cops quell rising crime. Instead, there and in L.A., they guard ICE agents rounding up brown people, documented or not. 

“It doesn’t have to be this way. Things can be different if we build real, sustained power that shows up every day—not just once every four years,” Shuler urged.  “Republicans aren’t going to save us. Democrats aren’t going to save us. Working people are going to save ourselves.”