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COLLATERAL DAMAGE: HOW TRUMP IS HOLLOWING OUT THE BLACK MIDDLE CLASS
 
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Mark Kreidler
April 24, 2025
Capital & Main
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_ The president has gone nuclear against federal union jobs —
historically African Americans’ ladder to economic equality. _

Demonstrators hold signs supporting the U.S. Postal Service during a
protest at the South Carolina statehouse on April 5 in Columbia., Sean
Rayford/Getty Images.

 

WHATEVER ELSE DONALD TRUMP intends with his assault on the federal
workforce, labor unions and the National Labor Relations Board, one
potential effect is clear: a devastating blow to Black Americans who
for decades have used public-sector jobs to move up from subsistence
living and toward the middle class.

“Federal employment has been a pathway to the middle class for
African American workers and their families since Reconstruction,
including postal work and other occupations,” explained Danielle
Mahones, director of the leadership development program at the
University of California, Berkeley, Labor Center. “[Now y]ou’re
going to see Black workers lose their federal jobs.”

Blacks are the only racial or ethnic group to be “overrepresented”
in government jobs. Data analysis
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the Pew Research Foundation shows that while Black people make up
12.8% of the nation’s population, they account for 18.6% of the
federal workforce.
 

Deep government cuts will affect California’s 150,000 federal
workers
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which Black employees comprise more than 10%.

 
At the U.S. Postal Service, Black workers comprised 30% of the total
workforce [[link removed]] in fiscal year
2022. Although the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that
African Americans are still underrepresented in executive positions
within the postal service, the overall numbers reflect a robust
history of Blacks seeking out USPS jobs to move their lives forward.

California has the second-largest population of federal workers
outside the Washington, D.C., area. Deep federal job cuts will affect
the state’s roughly 150,000 workers
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Black employees make up more than 10% of that total.

Historically, Black workers have used federal positions, many of them
union represented, as “pathways to homeownership, higher education
for their children and retirement savings — opportunities that were
not widely available to previous generations,” said Andrea Slater,
director of the Center for the Advancement of Racial Equity at Work at
the University of California, Los Angeles, Labor Center.

Those opportunities didn’t insulate Black families from the
decades-old practices of redlining housing policies, wage theft and
other inequities, Slater said, but a government job usually meant
dependable employment and some form of pension. “Federal jobs and
government contracts have helped build and establish cohesive Black
middle-class communities from the Bay Area to San Diego,” Slater
added.

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POSTAL WORKERS NATIONWIDE have publicly protested
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proposed cut of 10,000 jobs, which they consider a step toward an Elon
Musk-led attempt to privatize the postal service. At a Los Angeles
rally
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March, Brian Renfroe, president of the National Association of Letter
Carriers (NALC), told the crowd, “We had an election in November,
and some people voted for President Trump, and some people voted for
Vice President Harris, some people voted for other candidates. But you
know what none of them voted for? To dismantle the Postal Service.”

Still, a sense of unease hangs over the process. Asked for comment
this week, a union representative in Northern California, who said the
situation had their colleagues worried about losing jobs and civil
service careers, refused to be quoted or identified.

Trump’s true motives for clear-cutting federal jobs and going after
the unions aren’t known, but his animus toward union labor is no
secret. During his first term, the president’s policymakers acted
to weaken or abandon
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that protected workers’ pay and safety, and Trump directed
particular force against federal workers
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than a third of whom are covered by union contracts
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A March press release from the White House claimed that “certain
federal unions have declared war on President Trump’s agenda.”

 
Many workers and their unions were caught flat-footed by the scale and
intensity of Trump 2.0’s effort to decimate their ranks. “Nobody
was ready for this,” UC Berkeley’s Mahones said. “This is part
of a long-term project to eliminate the labor movement and unions.
What is new, though, is the acceleration — doing something so
massive, so quickly and chaotically, with no regard to the law nor
humanity.”

Trump signed an order in March directing 18 departments
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terminate contracts it had already signed with unions representing
federal workers, and to shutter the process through which employees
could file job-related grievances. Trump cited a 1978 law that makes
exceptions from collective bargaining for departments that have
national security missions.

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents
820,000 federal and D.C. government workers, said Trump has abused
that narrow cutout in the law to go after multiple departments that
are heavily unionized — and an accompanying fact sheet
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by the White House all but confirmed that. The release claimed that
“certain federal unions have declared war on President Trump’s
agenda,” adding that Trump “refuses to let union obstruction
interfere with his efforts to protect Americans and our national
interests.”

The AFGE and several other unions filed suit
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federal district court in Northern California seeking a temporary
restraining order to prevent Trump’s mandate from taking effect.
Caught in the middle, meanwhile, are hundreds of thousands of federal
employees whose jobs are on the line, including Black workers who may
have spent their entire careers in a single area of public-sector
service.

“The specific requirements of government sector positions will
likely require Black displaced workers to acquire new job skills —
and ageism and racism continue to influence hiring practices, even in
California,” Slater said. It is an unknown, deeply worrying road
ahead.

_Copyright 2025 Capital & Main Reprinted by permission._

_MARK KREIDLER is a California-based writer and broadcaster, and the
author of three books, including Four Days to Glory._

_CAPITAL & MAIN is an award-winning nonprofit publication whose
mission is to educate the public on matters of importance such as
economic inequality, climate change, health care, threats to
democracy, hate and extremism and immigration. We produce
investigative reporting, news features and analysis in California and
across the country. Capital & Main’s stories are co-published in
hundreds of media outlets, including The Guardian, USA Today, Fortune,
Fast Company and Rolling Stone. _

* Donald Trump
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* unions
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* federal workers
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* African Americans
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* Public Sector Unions
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* middle class
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* Postal Service
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