“Workers over billionaires”: Federal employees in Chicago protest Musk’s mass layoffs

Billionaire Elon Musk has painted a target on the backs of the federal employees, launching mass layoffs on Feb. 14 which affected tens of thousands of federal employees. But unionized federal employees are standing up and fighting back.  

On Feb. 18, members of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 704, which represents 1,000 Environmental Protection Agency employees in the Great Lakes region, braved sub-zero temperatures as they gathered in Chicago’s Federal Plaza to protest the firing of thousands of their colleagues across the nation and dozens of members of their local.

Holding signs that said “Stop the billionaire takeover” and “Workers over billionaires”, the AFGE members made it clear that that these layoffs are a transparent attempt to slash funding for public services so that billionaires like Musk can line their own pockets. 

Some 80,000 federal employees work in the state of Illinois. They perform many critical jobs, like monitoring drinking water quality, caring for our nation’s veterans and protecting consumers from predatory banks and junk fees.

One EPA employee said that, when she was fired on Feb. 14, she was in the process of helping residents in Ohio fight back against a factory that was burning lithium-ion batteries near a residential neighborhood packed with families.

So far, Musk has shown little regard for the consequences ordinary people like those families in Ohio will face from his haphazard attempts to gut public services. 

The layoffs are the latest in a series of anti-worker, anti-union moves by the Trump administration. Since taking office, President Trump has signed an executive order directing agency heads to unwind union contracts reached shortly before he took office, issued an abrupt order ending remote work, and has prevented the National Labor Relations Board from taking any action to protect workers’ rights.

Make no mistake: Musk has public services in his sights. We need to be prepared to stand up and stand together to protect our rights, our jobs, and the communities we serve.