If Elon Musk can make up his own government department, so can workers
“The government can work for billionaires or it can work for
working people—but not both,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler.
“Elon is just getting started. And he has already tried to force workers doing
essential services—including at the FAA and air traffic controllers even after
the tragedy at Washington National Airport—to retire, gained access to the
Treasury Department’s payment system with everyone’s private data, and is
declaring entire government agencies like USAID shut down and blocking workers
from accessing the building and their email. We will hold DOGE and Elon Musk
accountable because we are certain that the people who keep our food and
medicine safe know more about how to make government efficient than an outsider
whose companies benefit from the very agencies he is infiltrating.”
Billionaire Elon Musk formed DOGE—an unaccountable pseudo-government department supposedly created to make the federal government work more efficiently—but for whom? Ideas floated by the DOGE so far would slash government services working people depend on like meals for children in need, roll back protections for workers, and cut programs like Social Security and Medicare. Everything seems to be on the chopping block, except the government contracts and programs that personally benefit Musk.
The DPWL will report on proposed DOGE cuts and their impact
on working people. And DPWL will provide its own recommendations for how the
government can work more efficiently, proposed by the people who are the
backbone of America’s economy: America’s workers.
BACKGROUND
Working people have seen this movie before: so-called
efficiency experts who come into the workplace without background knowledge and
cut the workforce to make more profit. That model might work in the private
sector, but government services aren't lines on a spreadsheet—they have real
world impacts on actual people in communities across the country.
Yet Congress has formed a DOGE caucus and established an
official subcommittee to entertain DOGE ideas. The White House has renamed the
U.S. Digital Service as the U.S. DOGE Service, and has given Musk free run of
the White House and every agency.
The Department of People Who Work for a Living will look out
for the interests of hardworking taxpayers and the people who make our
government and economy run. The DPWL will defend programs like Veterans Affairs
benefits, Medicare and Medicaid that millions of Americans rely on and the more than 1 million union
members—including over 600,000 veterans—who work hard every day to implement
them. Policymakers in Congress and the White House will be presented with stark
choices between these departments, and they will have to show the world which
side they are on.
Contact: 202-637-5018
