This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Federal workers and supporters rallied in cities across the United States Wednesday to call for an end to mass firings ordered by President Trump and DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Their demand? SOS — Save Our Services.
In just one example of the impact of the cuts, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday it was seeking to rehire several agency employees who had been assigned to the federal government’s response to the H5N1 avian flu outbreak before their jobs were terminated as part of the Trump administration’s mass firings. In a statement, the USDA said the workers were fired in error, since their jobs are considered, quote, “public safety positions.”
Here in New York, public workers held several rallies Wednesday. In a minute, we’ll speak with one of the organizers, but first, this is Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez addressing workers and their supporters who gathered in the bitter cold at an SOS rally in Foley Square Wednesday night.
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO–CORTEZ: Elon Musk is not going after efficiency. He is not going after making these things better for people. He’s trying to steal Medicaid so that he can enrich himself. He is trying to steal. He’s trying to steal and gut NASA for — to line his pockets with SpaceX. He is trying to gut everything that is good in America for his own private profit.
This is the culmination of what oligarchy is all about and what oligarchy seeks to do. It’s the fusion of and the capture by the billionaire class of our democracy. That’s what they’re trying to do.
But it’s very important to understand that it is not sustainable. They may seem like they have power right now, but all of this dramatic action is trying to create the sense of inevitability, the sense of power, so that we abdicate in advance.
I want everyone who is here and folks who are watching who are not here, especially our federal workers, to listen to me very carefully, because we have very specific instructions in this moment. And I don’t say this as a Democrat. I don’t say this as a person with any sort of specific political views in this moment. I say this as an American who has sworn an oath to the United States Constitution. And as someone who cares about this Constitution and who cares about this country, we have an obligation to resist kings. We have an obligation to resist oligarchs. We have a sworn duty to this nation to resist oligarchy, including any billionaire that tries to undermine our Constitution. America is not for sale.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez addressing the Save Our Services protest in Foley Square in Manhattan Wednesday night.
AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday afternoon, hundreds also protested outside the federal building in New York City as part of the national day of action to support public workers being purged as part of the Trump administration’s cuts under the Department of Government Efficiency, led by the billionaire Elon Musk.
For more, we’re joined by someone who still works in the building — for now, national coordinator with the Federal Unionists Network who helped organize the day of action. Chris Dols works for the Army Corps of Engineers.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about what’s happening across the country, with people getting emails at various times in the day to leave their work, that they are fired, and then, in the case of nuclear safety workers, in the case of disease detectors within the CDC, as we’re dealing with an avian flu epidemic, a number of them, the government then tries to refind them, because they’ve cut off their government email, to say, “Whoops, we made a mistake”?
CHRIS DOLS: Yeah, before I start, I need to, by government regulation, disclaim, because you mentioned my employer, that anything I say is my opinion in my personal capacity and does not reflect the views necessarily of the Army Corps of Engineers. And I am the president of my local and, like you said, a coordinator with the Federal Unionists Network.
I mean, they’re really not after efficiency. The attacks on probationary employees is making it much, much harder for all of us who remain.
AMY GOODMAN: And can I just —
CHRIS DOLS: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: — make a clarification on probationary? We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of workers, and they can be people who work under two years, but they can also be someone who worked for 30 years, was promoted, right?
CHRIS DOLS: That’s right. There’s this —
AMY GOODMAN: And that then becomes a probationary period, and they can be fired within that.
CHRIS DOLS: That’s right. There are two categories of probationary employees: those who have just started with the federal government in the last one or two years, depending on which agency, and, yes, those who were, for whatever reason, changed job series and moved to a different part of the federal government but are otherwise longtime federal employees. I think there’s a misconception that all probationary employees are recent college grads or something like that. But, like myself, I started with the federal government after working for seven-and-a-half years with a dredging contractor, and it was my dredging expertise that made me a good cost engineer for the Army Corps. The person who I spoke with last night was — is a lawyer who spent years in private sector and brought his legal expertise to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to help protect against fraud there.
So, the probationary workforce is an extremely qualified workforce in the government. And, you know, I think the fact that they’re going after such high-quality employees, be they probationary or not, matches up with the chaos that they’re sowing, where they themselves now have to make up for the fact that they summarily fired all these people and have to go rehire them because, oh, it turns out they were doing something essential.
Well, it turns out all of us are doing something not only essential, but mandated by Congress. None of us do anything that’s not mandated by Congress, which, of course, gets at the deeper constitutional crisis element of what we’re talking about here. You know, the fact that all three branches of government are on board with this really begs the question of where the checks and balances are going to come from. And that’s where the federal workforce and the broader workforce and labor movement need to step in, because we’re the checks and we’re the balances that are going to be able to stop this before they go any further.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Chris, say: What is your message to other labor unions across the country?
CHRIS DOLS: Yeah. I mean, so, we picked the slogan “Save Our Services,” ”SOS,” on purpose, right? This is a distress signal coming from us in the federal sector. Yes, our workforce is under direct, immediate attack, and a lot of the media wants to tell the human interest story about how, you know, our family lives, our lives are being disrupted. And yes, that’s a story. But the bigger story, what they’re really after, is to gut the services that all Americans depend on. You think about, like, how many of us depend on home health aides. You think about the subsidies to schools that come through the Department of Education. You think about Medicaid, that’s now on the chopping block, or veterans’ healthcare. All the essential stuff that affects our ability to live our lives, that’s what they’re after, because from Elon Musk’s point of view, the more miserable we are, the less likely we are to fight back. They’re trying to immiserate the working class, and they’re doing it through the federal workforce. It’s not about efficiency. It’s not about the federal workforce. It’s about gutting the services that create a safety net in this country, because the more miserable we are, the easier it is for them to exploit us.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And you think, in fact, that they’re going to come after private sector employees, as well.
CHRIS DOLS: I mean, they are. They’re already going after the NLRB. The —
AMY GOODMAN: Explain, the National —
CHRIS DOLS: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: — Labor Relations Board, how that connects the two.
CHRIS DOLS: Yeah, the National Labor Relations Board is staffed by federal workers, many of whom are active in the Federal Unionists Network, alongside folks from all the agencies, and at the NLRB, their job is to uphold the right to organize, the ability to keep an abusive boss in check. All the things that allow for workers to push back against their exploitation and the abuse of management, people like Elon Musk, you know, really big bullies in their workplaces, that is enshrined by law, and it’s carried out by the NLRB.
And they’ve already pursued unprecedented attacks on that agency, and we know it’s going to get worse. We know that Elon Musk has lawsuits that he’s hoping to get in front of the Supreme Court soon to actually declare the NLRA, which is the act that established the NLRB, unconstitutional. So —
AMY GOODMAN: And do you think there’s a relationship between the fact that there are complaints against Elon Musk —
CHRIS DOLS: Of course.
AMY GOODMAN: — at the NLRB and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, two of the first agencies he went after?
CHRIS DOLS: Totally, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. You know, Tesla has a financing operation that is meant to be regulated by the Consumer Financial Bureau. And go figure, the man is going after the very agencies that regulate his businesses.
So, we’re putting out the distress signal to the broader labor movement that we all have to enter the streets, that we all have to create — they’re creating the crisis. We’re not the ones creating the crisis. But they think they can manage the crisis. Our job is to prove to them that it’s unmanageable and to make it unmanageable. You know, this is grand theft government. They are pursuing the biggest theft in world history, probably, given the scale that we’re talking about. And it’s going to be up to not just federal workers, but to the broader public, because it’s the whole public sphere that’s at stake.
So, if I can plug our — you know, the place to get involved, whether or not you’re a federal worker, or you just want to support the federal workforce because you see the attacks, it’s go.savepublicservices.com. And there, you can sign up, and we’ll make sure to plug you into all the actions that are coming ahead, because this will be weeks or months, but we can stop them if we mobilize.
AMY GOODMAN: Chris Dols is a union organizer and Army Corps of Engineer employee, national coordinator with the Federal Unionists Network.
Next up, the author of Crack-Up Capitalism on Elon Musk’s push to speed up the breakdown of the federal government. Stay with us.
