A panel of union members discuss the impact of federal funding cuts on the second day of the NC AFL-CIO’s annual convention in Wilmington. (Photo: Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline)
Across panels and speeches on the second day of the North Carolina AFL-CIO convention on Thursday, labor activists called to fight back against the Trump administration’s federal layoffs and funding cuts.
Amid deep cuts to the federal workforce brought on by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, speakers at the labor convention said unions must present a united front or risk losing hard-fought worker protections and many of their jobs entirely.
Christine Surrette, who serves as vice president of District 4 of the American Federation of Government Employees, warned federal layoffs — which have cut more than 200,000 government employees since January — will slow economic growth and erode public safety.
“It’s going to affect our veteran hospitals, our veterans — a lot of veterans are being laid off,” Surrette said. “I mean, National Park Services, we don’t have enough people to work for them now.”
Those impacts, she said, are not contained to the federal workforce. “There will be no work for the contractors,” she said. “No matter what union we’re in, what city we’re in, it’s across the nation.”
Alvin Warwick, business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 342 in Greensboro, said the end of Biden era programs around clean energy and electric vehicles have cost more than 10,000 jobs in the sector.
“Terminating these tax credits is the equivalent of terminating 1,000 Keystone XL pipelines,” he said. “It stands to be the biggest job-killing program in history.”
Jemma Superville, a registered nurse at the VA, asked attendees to support a demonstration on Friday at the office of Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) in defense of VA workers. (Photo: Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline)
Jemma Superville, an assistant director with National Nurses United, said politicians are demonizing workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs and stripping resources from the department as part of a long term effort to privatize the agency entirely.
“Our veterans have worked and have earned the right to their benefits, and therefore it means that we will stand with them to ensure that they get those rights,” she said. “We will not back down from that. We are the fiercest advocate to ensure therefore the protection of veterans, and we accept that role very seriously.”
She warned that privatization would only make health services for veterans more unreliable, remarking that when she tried to schedule a procedure to remove a small skin tag on her shoulder, she could not get one before February 2026. “Could you imagine, to deal with our veterans with their highly specialized issues, for which they don’t have the skills or the knowledge to deal with it?”
A registered nurse at the VA, Superville urged members of Congress to support the Protect America’s Workforce Act and the VA Employee Fairness Act — calling on them to sign discharge petitions to bring the bills to a vote.
Duke Graduate Student Union member Noah Jacobs said federal cuts have largely manifested on campus in the form of lost research funding from the National Institutes of Health as well as for Duke Health, the university’s medical services and education system. Those cuts have manifested in lost jobs for workers.
“What we’re seeing so far is the Duke administration has decided to make sweeping 10% cuts across the board, all departments — but of course, those cuts have not been equal. You all may have read the news that Duke cut 1,000 staff people’s jobs,” he said. “Basically, Duke’s administrative strategy has been staying silent in the wake of all these attacks.”
Jacobs said he was proud that his union was able to come to an agreement on their first contract with the university after two years of negotiations, expressing hope that it would help protect workers in the face of federal threats. He said as far as he was aware, all staff cuts were to non-union positions.
NC AFL-CIO general counsel Trisha Pande spoke on changes to the National Labor Relations Board under the Trump administration, recapping the president’s removal of the agency’s general counsel as well as of member Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black woman appointed to the board. She also outlined the Trump administration’s termination of contracts with federal workers’ unions on grounds of national security.
SEIU President April Verrett said workers must rely on “radical imagination” to advance economic justice and resist Trump administration cuts. (Photo: Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline)
“There’s no sugarcoating it — our labor laws and our federal agencies are under attack. But unions have come together to challenge those attacks in court,” Pande said. “We are fighting not only through legal action, but with our voices, our votes, and our solidarity.”
April Verrett, president of the Service Employees International Union — a two million member union that reunited with AFL-CIO in January — also urged labor organizers to challenge the administration in a speech Thursday. She condemned not only labor actions by the Trump administration, but the mobilization of the National Guard in American cities and raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement throughout the country.
“We are organizing everywhere, in airports, in hospitals, in classrooms, in courthouses and in coffee shops. We are not just playing defense,” Verrett said. “We are taking the fight directly to corporations and the politicians in their pockets who think that we’ll stay silent.?Because we know the truth. We know that it is our power that they want to dismantle. It is our power that they want to decimate.”
Verrett said labor activists need to turn to “radical imagination” to empower them to stand up against violations of their rights.
“We are not going to be afraid, we are not going to be divided, ’cause we got to be ready,” she said. “We are ready for a country where every job comes with dignity, not disrespect. We are ready for health care that heals, that does not bankrupt. We are ready for wages to let you live and not just barely survive.”
On the first day of the NC AFL-CIO’s annual gathering, Gov. Josh Stein urged lawmakers to back an economic agenda that centers working families by improving access to child care, education, and health services. NC AFL-CIO members will select a successor to longtime president MaryBe McMillan on Friday.
Following the conclusion of the convention Friday afternoon, members of the nurse’s union and supporters plan to demonstrate at Sen. Ted Budd’s Wilmington office in protest of cuts to the VA. Superville, the NNU speaker, told audience members it will be a “defining moment” in their fight to win back labor protections.