Steel toed boots. Cowboy hats. Suits. Union membership swag. It all peppered the crowd of around 100 Wyoming workers who gathered at the state Capitol on Feb. 28 to protest state and federal spending and workforce cuts, with a specific eye on blue collar workplace safety.
One protest sign read, “Trump and Musk are against us.”
“It's scary that the highest tier of government is in such disarray right now,” said Cameron Tibbets, a Cheyenne-based union sheet metal worker.
He’s protested in years past over other worker rights issues, but said, “This affects me more directly than a lot of the other ones I've been to.”
Tibbets said he’s worried about the Trump administration’s recent actions to downsize the federal government, including the Occupational Safety and Health administration (OSHA) and the gutting of the National Labor Relations Board, which plays a large role in establishing rights for workers and labor unions.
“Elon Musk and Trump just willy-nilly firing a bunch of people, that's going to destroy people's lives, and people are going to get hurt and die and lose their livelihoods,” Tibbets said.
Travis Allen, a Cheyenne union plumber and pipefitter apprentice, agreed.
“If the stuff that we do isn't done correctly, people get hurt or die,” Allen said. “So without somebody, like OSHA, to keep the standards as high as they are, you're going to see a lot more of it.”
Federal legislation to abolish OSHA was recently introduced by an Arizona Republican senator, but hasn’t seen much movement. Supporters say the federal government shouldn’t regulate private workplaces.
But Marshal Cummings, a Green River trona miner and local union president, disagreed. He spoke to the crowd, saying that stripping back federal safety regulations and workers’ rights would be taking steps backwards.
“Are we willing to go back to a time where workers had to die for the right for a safe job? Are we willing to let corporations chip away protections that so many fought and blood for?” Cummings asked the crowd as they responded with strong “no’s.”
Cummings brought up the 1914 Ludlow Massacre in southern Colorado, where 21 people died fighting for safer working conditions in the coal mines. It caught national attention and eventually led to labor reforms, including the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), which was formed in 1977.
Cummings said he fears federal cuts could dismantle all this work. According to the DOGE website, the real estate contract for the MSHA office in Green River was terminated, along with 28 others across the country. Wyoming Public Radio (WPR) called the Green River MSHA office on March 3 and an employee still answered the phone. However, when WPR referenced DOGE, the MSHA employee hung up the phone.
OSHA and MSHA oversee a wide scope of safety standards, like communicating hazards, fall protections and ladders on construction sites, powered industrial trucks, controlling hazardous energy, respiratory protection, other eye and face coverings, and even working in extreme heat and cold.
