Ross Thomas was driving a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation truck idling on the side of the highway when the car left the lane and struck it. Fortunately, no one was injured in the December accident. That’s because Thomas, an equipment operator in that department, was in the so-called “safety truck” with silencer which absorbed the impact.
Thomas left. But he believes the accident is a stark reminder of the dangers of his job and what he stands to lose if his state government employer had the power to compromise on employee safety.
Thomas is a member of Local 3033 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents operators, mechanics and department inspectors in Dauphin County in Harrisburg. He is particularly concerned about how Donald Trump’s presidency could threaten his safety at work. Trump’s allies, he told Capital & Main, “want to eliminate union protections.” (Disclosure: AFSCME is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)
Thomas pointed to Project 2025, a comprehensive handbook on Trump’s second term (“900 pages of pure terror,” Thomas said) published by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Trump has he distanced himself from a plan written by his relatives in the delicate of the universal public opposition; these are still proposals similar Trump for many. And both Trump and Project 2025 clearly disputed public sector unions.
Capital & Main spoke with Thomas at AFSCME’s statewide headquarters in Harrisburg, where a gigantic plaque appears on the opposite wall. It’s a memorial: Dozens of gold plaques are engraved with the names of state Department of Transportation employees who died in the line of duty.
Nearly half of Pennsylvania’s 750,000 union members – 350,000 workers – are public sector workers like Thomas. In delicate of Project 2025 proposals aimed at weakening or even eliminating public sector unions, AFSCME – the largest public service workers union in Pennsylvania and across the country – is mobilizing its members to campaign for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris on the battleground.
The stakes are high because many public sector workers count on their unions to negotiate on more than just wages and benefits – AFSCME State Workers in Pennsylvania won in 2023 22% wage increases within four years – but also about safe and sound working conditions.
Dian Roy Smith, a member of AFSCME Local 1981, fears that Trump wants to “get rid of AFSCME completely,” she said.
Roy Smith has been working as a field agent for the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue for 35 years and is just two years away from retirement. “He [might] they are preventing me from retiring for which I have worked,” she said.
She said Project 2025 questions the value of public sector unions, pointing to a statement on page 82 of the report that says: “Congress should consider, first and foremost, the adequacy of public sector unions.”
Members of public sector trade unions include more than just civil servants – they also include workers such as firefighters, police officers and teachers. But more than that 65,000 Pennsylvania union members belong to AFSCME, which mainly represents state workers like Roy Smith as well as those in local government.
The proposals in Project 2025 that threaten her relationship were partly what motivated Roy Smith to take time off work to canvass for Harris, even though it would delay her long-awaited retirement.
Participates in AFSCME’s massive vote-getting campaign among members. So far this election cycle, AFSCME’s political action committee is: biggest spenders among trade unions on independent communication campaigns – such as extensive mailers, social media and TV ads – either for Harris or against Trump. It also spends more than other unions on its own internal campaign communications to influence members.
Project 2025 is generally a major topic of conversation for AFSCME. The union has worked to educate its members and canvassers about the plan, even assuming website about it.
The assumptions of Project 2025 serve as convincing information for union members. Roy Smith recalled a discussion about Project 2025 with an AFSCME member who was a staunch Trump supporter but worried about losing overtime pay. She explained what the plan was suggested limiting millions of workers’ access to overtime. According to Roy Smith, the MP finally told her: “I think I should reconsider how I vote this year.”
Trump has repeatedly tried to distance himself from the plan written by some of his former advisers, but in 2022 he said in a speech to The Heritage Foundation that the group’s policy proposals “will lay the groundwork and detail the blueprints for what exactly our movement will do.”
And if the plans come to fruition, union rights would likely be in the crosshairs, as safety unions often negotiate, union advocates argued.
“Trade unions, especially through collective bargaining, act as a safeguard against [management] decisions that favor efficiency over safety,” said Dominic D. Wells, a professor of political science at Bowling Green State University. Tests – including his own – confirms it – he said. Wells found that where unions are robust, there are fewer deaths among firefighters and police officers. Wells added that the collapse of the union led to this increased number of workplace fatalities in right-to-work states.
Thomas worried that without a union to negotiate with his employer, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation could save money and manpower by limiting the utilize of safety carts like the one that saved his life.
Even Roy Smith worries about workplace safety as he travels across the state writing citations to companies that haven’t paid their taxes. Her local union negotiated with the Department of Revenue for employee self-defense classes, which Roy Smith found helpful.
Campaigns against trade unions in the public sector are nothing recent. Republicans do this a lot he objected public sector unions, arguing that they lead to government inefficiency and increased spending.
Partly for this reason, AFSCME hits strenuous in electoral politics, almost always supporting Democrats, which is another reason why Republicans concerned about trade union power. Since 1990, the national organization has contributed over $175 million for federal campaigns, 12th most any organization.
But AFSCME does not only devote financial resources to political activities. The scale of the perceived threat posed by Project 2025 led AFSCME members to re-engage in the defensive organizing strategy the union had developed in response to the evisceration of public sector unions in Wisconsin in 2011 and broader right-wing movement against public sector unions that followed.
In 2015, the union was established AFSCME robusta program designed to transform members into organizers by encouraging them to have regular, one-on-one conversations with colleagues about their experiences at work. This strategy, a form of internal organizing aimed at strengthening the union itself, became more urgent when the Supreme Court restricted the ability of public sector unions to collect dues from the non-members they represent in the 2018 elections. Janus v. AFSCME ruling.
“It’s more important to know how to do it [workers] do in their workplace rather than focusing on elections,” said Michael Maguire, legislative director of statewide AFSCME Council 13, describing how the union combines political education with workplace organizing. Conversations about work-related topics often lead to political discussions – like when Roy Smith spoke to a Trump supporter who expressed concerns about access to overtime, which Project 2025 aims to erode.
For the 2024 campaign, AFSCME is activating a subset of employees who are typically already politically engaged. Public sector workers not represented by a union are almost 40% more likely to vote than private sector workers who are not unionized, but a unionized public sector worker is twice as likely to vote as nonunion workers in the private sector, study finds 2020 study published in Sociological Forum. The result is considerable electoral power that could facilitate flip Pennsylvania, which Biden won in 2020. just over 80,000 votes. And that could swing the 2024 election in Democrats’ favor.
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