The International Trade Union Confederation put the United States on its Global Rights Watchlist this year. First time ever. The category is “systemic violations of worker rights.” The ITUC represents 200 million workers across 169 countries, and they looked at a nation that stripped collective bargaining from over a million federal employees by executive order and said yeah, that belongs on the list. The same kind of list the US waves around when it wants labor provisions in a trade deal.
The ITUC called it “perhaps the biggest act of union busting in the nation’s history.” Not one union. Not one industry. The entire federal workforce, overnight, by memo. Secretary Hegseth sent it. Management terminated the agreements. A million people woke up and their union was decorative. The House passed a bipartisan bill to restore those rights, 231 to 195, which means nothing because it’ll sit in the Senate until everyone moves on and then die on the calendar like every other bill that would have helped.
The country that built its whole brand on worker freedom is now internationally flagged for violating the rights of the people who keep it running. Same country that tacks labor provisions onto every trade deal it signs and lectures developing nations about workplace standards. Somewhere in a federal building right now there’s a worker who processes those trade complaints for a living, and they can’t bargain for their own lunch break.