This article is a joint publication of The American Prospect and Workday Magazine, a nonprofit newsroom devoted to holding the powerful accountable through the perspective of workers. Jason was elected to represent unionized workers at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in New York state. But on August 8, he got the same notice as 400,000 colleagues across the VA: their union contracts were being abruptly eliminated in response to a Trump administration executive order. It was a Friday, and by the following Tuesday he had to clear out the union local’s office, which was housed in a VA facility. “I had to have a moving company show up, box up all of our equipment, all of our files, all the employee files,” says Jason, who requested I use a pseudonym and not identify his facility or specific profession to protect him and his colleagues from retaliation.
