Trump era confronts organized labor with gravest crisis in decades

On Thursday, Trump announced that he would nominate as his labor secretary Andrew Puzder, a fast-food executive who has opposed additional overtime pay for workers and expressed skepticism about increasing the minimum wage. That followed a pair of Twitter messages Wednesday evening in which Trump attacked an Indiana union leader who had criticized him, saying the official had done a "terrible job representing workers."

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The crisis for unions is a combination of direct threats from Trump's agenda and the knowledge that many rank-and-file workers are sympathetic to his populist message. Exit poll data from the Nov. 8 election shows that Hillary Clinton's smaller margin of victory among union members, along with Trump's unusually strong performance, helped him win the White House.

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The list of potential setbacks for the labor movement is daunting. Some union leaders are worried that a Trump administration would attempt to introduce a national right-to-work law -- allowing any employee anywhere to exempt themselves from participating in a union -- and block unions from deducting dues from paychecks.

Trump also will be able to fill two of the five spots on the National Labor Relations Board, which adjudicates disputes between unions and corporate management.

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"The assault on unions, as institutions, is indeed unprecedented in scale," Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin said in an email. "Even in the 1920s, conservative Republicans did not argue against their very legitimacy."