AFL-CIO Launches the Department of People Who Work for a Living to Take on Elon Musk's DOGE

If Elon Musk can make up his own government department, so can workers

The AFL-CIO has launched the new Department of People Who Work for a Living (DPWL), a new campaign to hold Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, accountable and make sure the federal government is responsive to working people and not just to the whims of an unelected CEO like Musk. The campaign will report on the facts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts and what you can do to fight back.

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“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.