Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are engaged in a largely unprecedented attack on the federal workforce. They are attempting to lay off thousands of “probationary” employees who lack full civil service protections and are allegedly waging a campaign of intimidation, seemingly to force those they can’t fire to forfeit their rights by quitting. Federal courts are beginning to intervene, with one judge ordering the reinstatement of over 24,000 fired probationary workers, but Musk and the Trump administration remain hell-bent on gutting public services.

Musk’s attacks on federal employees should be understood as part of the Trump administration's broader plan to turn the public sector into a tool for private profit, paving the way for tax cuts for corporations and billionaires. Look no further than mass layoffs at the IRS, aimed at sabotaging the agency’s enforcement capacity and making it easier for rich tax cheats to evade detection.

Federal workers are bravely fighting back. They have filed numerous lawsuits and risked their livelihoods by staging protests and blowing the whistle on DOGE’s actions. However, they are fighting with one hand tied behind their back. Unlike workers in the private sector, federal employees are prohibited from going on strike to defend their rights. While some restrictions on the right to strike for government workers who deliver essential services are permissible, this blanket prohibition runs counter to international human rights and labor standards. But workers risk losing their jobs if they ignore it.

The sad state of US labor protections isn’t just a problem for federal workers. Those impacted by DOGE face unique restrictions on their ability to resist, but across the entire US economy, workers lack the tools to effectively fight against low wages and dehumanizing working conditions. Dedicated employees across the federal government keep critical public services working and help us achieve our common goals, but fundamentally, federal employees are workers — nurses, scientists, delivery drivers, accountants. Like workers everywhere, they have had to fight for their rights, and as history illustrates, struggles for labor rights in both the public and private sector are intertwined.

The 1981 Air Traffic Controllers Strike and the Linked Fates of Public and Private Sector Workers

Previous attacks on federal employees have emboldened private sector companies to take similar anti-worker actions. In 1981, when over 11,000 federal air traffic controllers walked off the job to demand better pay and hours, President Reagan responded by firing every striking controller and banning them from federal employment for life. This strikebreaking action reverberated throughout the entire economy. It helped normalize aggressive anti-union tactics in the private sector, contributing to a decline in strike activity and union density that continues to this day.

Reagan’s mass firing of striking controllers helped cement the practice of “permanently replacing” striking workers across the private sector. Unlike with temporary replacements, when companies hire permanent strikebreakers, striking workers are not guaranteed their job back even after a strike ends. While the tactic has been legal since the 1930s, it was largely considered taboo before the 1980s. But with the public defeat of the air traffic controllers’ union, employers felt empowered to use permanent replacements to crush strikes with impunity. In the 1970s, just one in 66 major strikes saw companies resort to permanent replacements. In the decade following the 1981 strike, this rate skyrocketed to one in seven.

The ability to effectively fire striking workers is a powerful tool to defeat strikes and intimidate workers seeking to assert their rights. As the following chart shows, the number of strikes plummeted throughout the 1980s, and remains low to this day.

Withholding labor is perhaps the most powerful tactic workers have to increase wages and improve working conditions. The eight-hour workday, prohibitions on child labor, and the ability of public sector workers to unionize were all won in the wake of massive strikes. But the increased brazenness of strikebreaking across the economy has reversed some of these gains. The decline in strikes in the public and private sectors — and the broader erosion of organized labor’s bargaining power — is reflected in rising inequality and increased precarity, especially for low-wage and marginalized workers.

The US is virtually alone in allowing striking workers to lose their job, but this is just one example of how federal labor law’s extreme restrictions on the right to strike put a thumb on the scale for companies. The US is also one of just a handful of countries that flatly prohibits “sympathy strikes.” This type of strike involves workers at one company protesting the actions of a separate employer, a form of solidarity that has enabled workers to win concessions from even the most powerful companies. The employer-biased labor laws in the US are not just uncommon; they are a violation of international labor standards. In Oxfam’s ranking of worker organizing protections across 38 economically developed countries, the US ranked sixth from the bottom.

The Attack on Federal Workers Shows the Need for Labor Law Reform

Just as Reagan’s aggressive response to the air traffic controller strike impacted workers throughout the economy, the impact of the current assault on workers’ rights by DOGE will not be confined to federal employees. Others have noted how, by attempting to lay off thousands of workers and undermining agencies’ operations, the Trump administration’s actions mirror those of private equity. We should all fear the tactics of worker intimidation and counterproductive cost-cutting spreading throughout the economy.

Whether used by DOGE or a private company, the ultimate aim of anti-labor tactics is the same: profit for an ultra-wealthy few at the expense of everyone else. Musk and his fellow billionaires all stand to profit as the federal government is weakened or sold off. The attacks on federal workers are part of a larger inequality-fueling agenda, which will see ordinary workers everywhere pay for monopoly profits and tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations.

If there is good news in these bleak times, it’s that workers are already fighting back against Trump and Musk’s self-serving agenda. Their actions are a reminder of the power of organizing and of the urgent task of removing legal restraints on workers’ ability to fight for democracy and a more equal future. Proposals like the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act aim to do just that by banning the use of permanent replacements and making it easier for workers to unionize. However, the PRO Act would only apply to the private sector. We should also remove unfair restrictions on the right to strike for government workers, enabling them to not only fight for their rights but also for the future of public services.